Fixing Vista’s VMware Problem
I installed VMware on my Vista machine not too long ago, and found that I could no longer reach my machine remotely via the CopSSH daemon (Read my article on CopSSH here), nor via the Remote Desktop Client. At first I thought it might have been a problem with the port forwarding on my router, but I quickly found that I could not reach my main computer within my own LAN.
The problems started immediately after I installed VMware, so I figured that was the culprit. I dug around a bit and found nothing out of the ordinary as far as my installation was concerned, so I dug around on the web. I found the solution to my problem in the VMware user forum.
It is well known that VMware installs several virtual network adapters to use for NAT, among other things. What is not so well known is that when your Vista firewall is enabled, it views these two new adapters as interlopers, and configures the firewall as if you were on a public network. This essentially shuts down any service ports you might have had open, custom or otherwise.
To remedy the problem, you can do one of two things:
1) Turn of your Vista firewall. That’s it – you should be good to go after that.
2) Set any of your virtual machines to use bridged networking, and disable the two VMware virtual adapters, leaving your firewall enabled.
I actually disabled both of the adapters and disabled Vista’s firewall, but that’s just me.
Hopefully this helps someone out there with the same issue.
