General tips on VMware

1. Running out of memory? Disable the memory limits

1a. My Virtual Machine doesn't boot from cd-rom

1b. Use Internet Connection Sharing to access the LAN
       Also works to access a Token Ring LAN and Wireless LAN from a virtual machine!

2. I get an error message about SetBackingMemory

3. The mousepointer moves very slow in the Virtual Machine

4. Moving your disks to a different location 

1. Running out of memory? Disable the memory limits

If you are running multiple virtual machines on 1 PC using a certain amount of memory, you can normally not run more machines than the memory limit enables you to run. If you have only 512 Mb RAM, than two NetWare 6 servers with 256 Mb won't run with the memory limit enabled. 

I have disabled the memory limit (Menu Settings --> Preferences, see below) and i can now run my two clustered NetWare 6 servers with 256 Mb RAM each, a Windows NT 4 workstation with 64 Mb and a Windows XP professional workstation with 128 Mb of RAM together and even work with ConsoleOne and PowerPoint on my host system while doing demonstrations. Probably because of my 1GHz Pentium III and my fast HDD this works fast enough.

1b. Use Internet Connection Sharing to access the LAN

To access the LAN from your virtual machine you can use Bridged Networking. Or you can run Linux or Window 2000 Server as a host and install routing.

But running a server is also not always an option and in some cases you will not be able to use bridged networking. For example in case of a Token Ring LAN or a Wireless LAN. But in both cases you can still access the LAN with the TCP/IP protocol by using Internet Connection Sharing that is shipped with Windows 2000 and Windows XP.

I was even able to login to a NetWare 5.1 server on a Windows 98 VM via my Token Ring PC-card adapter. But be aware that not all communication may work. I couldn't for example use printing this way on a Windows 2000  domain. But just give it a try.

You enable Internet Connection Sharing on the adapter that  is connected to the LAN and configure your Host-only adapter as your Home networking connection. The image below is an example on Windows XP.

Some extra info on ICS:

- your VMware host-only adapter will be set to 192.168.0.1 (24 bit mask) by default by ICS

- so configure your workstation with 192.168.0.2 (24 bit mask)

- and configure your VM guest with a gateway address of 192.168.0.1

2. I get an error message about SetBackingMemory

The complete error message looks like this:

The resolution to this problem is to set the color depth on the host system to 16 bits or 8 bits. 

3. The mousepointer moves very slow in the Virtual Machine

If your mouse pointer responds very slow in the Virtual Machine you must probably increase the Hardware Acceleration for the VMware video adapter. With thanks to Rogier Dittner for this tip.

4. Moving your disks to a different location

This is a tip/utility by Bryan Keadle. This small program changes the links in the configuration files to the new location after you have moved the files to a new location or even to a different computer.

You can download the tool here. 

PS: In VMware Workstation 3.1 relative paths have been added that enable your disks to always work in every directory.

If you need more tips or help from other VMware-users, visit the NNTP-newsgroups at news.vmware.com, there also is a newsgroup on NetWare,.

If you have any tips you would like to share, e-mail them to me so i can put them on my website.