52 Responses to Installing Microsoft Vista in VMWare:

• Andrew Smith
  July 31, 2005 3:29pm

  Legend, thanks alot for this!

• somestuff
  July 31, 2005 6:05pm

  Thanks, good info, but I still couldn’t get it to work with VMWare. Keep getting “Windows can’t find a suitable HD to store files” or something similar. Followed your insturctions pretty carefully too…

• Andrew Smith
  July 31, 2005 6:42pm

  Strange, that worked here.
  Did you format from the command prompt? (I did)
  Also the HDD has to be pretty big, it uses 4.5GB, so a 4GB won’t do.

• h0bbel
  July 31, 2005 6:46pm

  Well, It’s the steps I followed and it worked beatifully from here. There was a bit of trial and error involved, but as far as I can tell the steps are accurate.

• Christian
  July 31, 2005 11:09pm

  Would you mind to please exactly decribe your vmware config?

  Do you use a typical “Longhorn (experimental)” or one of the other Config-Templates?
  If you use a custom Config, which SCSI Adapter do you use (Buslogic or LSI Logic)?
  Which kind of HD did you use (IDE/SCSI)?

  Thanks a lot for your help!

  regards 
  Christian

• h0bbel
  July 31, 2005 11:24pm

  Stock “Longhorn (Experimental)” settings, nothing special at all. SCSI disk (10gb) seen by Vista as a being attached to a LSI Ultra 320 SCSI 2000 Series, w/1020/1030 controller.

• Christian
  July 31, 2005 11:58pm

  strange, I still got the same error like somestuff reported.
  Maybe I’ll have a try with the windows xp installation and upgrading.
  thanks again for your help!

• somestuff
  August 1, 2005 7:59am

  Thanks h0bbel…
  I have FINALLY gotten past the opening screens and it appears to be installing….CD-ROM is running like crazy and it say “Windows is Installing”. I did the format from the >prompt as you suggested and it seems to be working. Also had to configure BIOS to boot from CD-ROM before HD to get things to work right. Now just a matter of time…I hope…while everything is installed….
  stay tuned…

• somestuff
  August 1, 2005 12:19pm

  Well, got it installed, but that’s about all. NO VIDEO (only 4 colors), NO SOUND, NO ETHERNET, NO INTERNET. Tried to install VMWare tools from VMWare menu, but nothing happened….it just seemed to hang. I don’t think I’m going to spend much more time on this one. Good Luck to anyone else trying this!

• h0bbel
  August 1, 2005 1:12pm

  Well, if you enable the VMWare tools, it doesn’t install it. You still need to browse to the virtual CD (d:\) and run the setup utility….

• somestuff
  August 1, 2005 4:11pm

  EUREKA! Not exactly sure how I did it, but got everything working pretty well. Even managed to dig up an old sound card driver which worked! Thanks h0bbel, for your help. I couldn’t have done it without you!

• h0bbel
  August 1, 2005 6:13pm

  Very Cool. :)

• alex_extreme
  August 4, 2005 6:27pm

  When exactly are you supposed to press Shift-F10? When I try that, nothing happens

• alex_extreme
  August 4, 2005 6:28pm

  Never mind, worked it out

• h0bbel
  August 4, 2005 6:31pm

  “when the first graphical screen turns up press SHIFT+F10 to open a command prompt” But you figured it out while I was responding, I see. ;)

• Assman
  August 8, 2005 4:17am

  I ran diskpart from inside the installer but didnt format with diskpart. I rebooted and for some reason the HDD has disappeared. I opened the BIOS in vmware and its nowhere to be found. Im going to try and format the drive inside of diskpart this time. Mabye it will work.

• OneTone
  August 20, 2005 4:41am

  I have installed Vista successfully in VMware.

  NIC driver and sound driver are both installed successfully.

  But “Shared folders” doesn’t work.

  It reports “.host\Shared Folders is not accessible. You might not have permission to use this network resource. Contact the administrator of this server to find out if you have access permissions.\nThe network path was not found.

  Then what’s up and what should I do now?

  Thanks for your help.

• h0bbel
  August 22, 2005 8:08pm

  Well, I haven’t played with the Shared Folders bit. I probably should though.

• keith
  August 29, 2005 6:45am

  to use shared folders, you have to do .host\ and all your shares will be in there - i use it in windows xp all the time. i run vmware off linux doing this.

• cozofdeath
  September 18, 2005 6:50pm

  Anyone have a solution to 32-bit onboard Realtek High Definition Audio drivers. My sound is the only thing not working. Any help would be great!

• h0bbel
  September 18, 2005 10:15pm

  In VMWare? Guess not, since that emulates a SB card.

• MAgix
  September 30, 2005 3:46pm

  I cant open the Command Prompt, i press SHIFT-F10 on the first GUI screen and nothing happen :(

• h0bbel
  September 30, 2005 7:12pm

  Well, it worked for me…

• senthilvijay
  October 2, 2005 12:51pm

  I really needed this info, well I will try it from office tomorrow

• senthilvijay
  October 3, 2005 4:18pm

  Successfully installed vista on my vmware, but unable to install graphics card driver, it says failed to load driver, unable to get the look and feel, i am using the latest VMWare 5.5

• Curry (ZL-NL)
  October 26, 2005 4:05pm

  Hi dudes, create a disk of 11GB (with or without 2GB splits).
  Boot with Vista, click advanced when disk is shown, make two partitions, one of 9GB and the second with 2GB. Select the fist partition of 9GB for the installation, Vista now also has room for is temp-files on the second partition. For some reason Vista will not install on a disk which consists of only ONE partition!

  Good luck!

• h0bbel
  October 26, 2005 6:28pm

  I had no problems with my one partition setup, but that might have changed in recent betas.

• Dan Wozzell
  October 27, 2005 9:50am

  In settings of the vmware (longhorn) add another disk - the setup files will be copied to this. I believe you can delete this after.

• tarionyx
  November 12, 2005 6:38am

  I’m installing longhorn beta1 on VMware 5.5 rc2 (18007) and I had to do the 2nd disk mod. Its finally installing :-/

• Christian
  November 12, 2005 10:17am

  I get to installation Step 2 and it freezes at about 10% through for ages please help!

  Thanks xTiAn

• Chris
  November 14, 2005 4:00pm

  Finally made it to step 2. This is using Vista Beta 1 (downloaded on 13 Nov 2005) on VMWare Workstation 4.5.2 (Build 8848). It’s taken about 2 hours to get to this point, even though I followed the instructions above closely. It does seem to require at least two disks (couldn’t do it with two paritions on a single disk) and constantly having to remember to hit ESC, then pick “CD-ROM” during the VMWare BIOS phase was getting a bit tedious…

  I couldn’t get Shift+F10 to work either - mostly nothing would happen; somtimes the VM session would simply crash/reboot. To launch a command prompt I went through the bizarre way of reading the notes (so it launches Notepad), then clicking File/Open, navigating to X:\windows\system32\ , right-clicking cmd.exe, and selecting ‘open’ from the context menu.

• Chris
  November 14, 2005 5:13pm

  Well, it’s up and running! Don’t believe the progress bar when you get the “completing windows installation” message - this went to 100% about 20 times before I gave up watching it.

  Not had any joy installing the NIC driver as per h0bbel’s comments (get an ‘error adding to store’), will try again…

• Chris
  November 14, 2005 6:26pm

  Managed to get NIC working using drivers from here:

  http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/utilities/V4.51.zip

  (Source: http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?threadID=20129)

• Mark
  December 1, 2005 4:50pm

  Anyone get the pretty GFX to activate? Any ideas on how to get that working?

• Guillaume Lafrance
  February 7, 2006 11:30pm

  Thanks for the guide!

• Jay
  February 26, 2006 7:40am

  Curious as to if the same method will work for Beta 2. In VMware, it will see the 35GB that I set aside for it, but I can’t click on next even after I’ve formated it. Any ideas?

• Raul
  March 22, 2006 9:51pm

  Very useful indeed, thank to you, h0bbel, for your page and everybody who wrote the comments.

  I had been fighting with this for very long with no success until I read your page and all the comments.

  Formatting the disk from the prompt and changing boot sequence in the bios worked fine for me, with VMWare 5.5, Windows Vista (Experimental), Hard Disk (SCSI 0:0), CD-ROM (IDE 1:0), Ethernet Bridged, and running an iso image of Windows Vista Longhorn Beta 2 Build 5231 by Virtual Daemon

• h0bbel
  March 22, 2006 11:23pm

  Excellent. Glad someone finds it useful!

• maverick
  June 19, 2006 12:27pm

  Hi

  I have ben trying to install vista on vmware .whne i try to install vmware tools it just open the cd drive and keeps waiting ……..
  pleaes help

• CyberLJ
  September 2, 2006 2:46pm

  I’ve tried to create either upgraded from XP pro or tried to create another disk when fresh install, but it still didn’t work, after it installed, it just shown me the black screen and not seems working. After that I followed the info above, it still the same result…so strange. I’m trying the Pre-RC1 with
  VMWare 5.5, Windows Vista (Experimental), Hard Disk (SCSI 0:0), CD-ROM (IDE 1:0), Ethernet Bridged, and running an iso image of Windows Vista RC Build 5552 by Virtual Daemon. Anyone got any ideas?

• James Logsdon
  September 8, 2006 10:45pm

  Hey, thanks for the tip, h0bbel.

  The first time I tried this, it failed. So I tried without rebooting after creating the partition and it’s working. Just thought I’d let people know.

  This is using build 5600 RC1, by the way.

• Felu
  September 16, 2006 9:49am

  Thanks a lot :)

• jecoyote
  November 22, 2006 12:45am

  the partition format can be done, but not with an straight line like above
  i could do it, but this way:

  [partition]
  diskpart
  select disk 0
  create partition primary

  [Format]
  select volume 0
  format

  hope this help

• jecoyote
  November 22, 2006 1:23am

  I have a problem, and is after the install screen, it stop asking me for cd/dvd drivers, here u can rescan, brouse, cancel but just hand there.

  and i looked for the cd drivers but doenst work.

  if anyone of you have seen this and know how to get over it, please help.

  thx

• Remote Support
  March 11, 2007 12:59am

  The release version of Vista installed perfectly in VMWare. Problem with getting a network card to work though. the integrated card in the desktop doesn’t work and purchased a Netgear GA311 that was supposed to work according to the hype on the box cover and that doesn’t work.

• Bill
  March 15, 2007 8:10pm

  Hi :)
  I have installed Windows Vista for the first time..so i dont really know how to use
  them..I have done the setup right.My probem is at the point when you have to fill in a User Name…I wrote a User Name without a password..and then i accidently hit the enter button twice. And i got transfered in the log in screen.. now… i know that if i can get to the
  Ms Dos screen… i can put the command “recovery” and the installation will start again (i dont have the vista CD or any other remove pswd disk).. a friend of mine told me that if i press Shift+f10 i the Ms dos window will appear, but i keep pressing it at the login screen
  and does nothing :(…. can anyone plz help me with this?

• Bill
  March 15, 2007 8:11pm

  Hi :)
  I have installed Windows Vista for the first time..so i dont really know how to use
  them..I have done the setup right.My probem is at the point when you have to fill in a User Name…I wrote a User Name without a password..and then i accidently hit the enter button twice. And i got transfered in the log in screen.. now… i know that if i can get to the
  Ms Dos screen… i can put the command “recovery” and the installation will start again (i dont have the vista CD or any other remove pswd disk).. a friend of mine told me that if i press Shift+f10 i the Ms dos window will appear, but i keep pressing it at the login screen
  and does nothing :(…. can anyone plz help me with this? h0bbel? :D

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• DaveL
  August 8, 2008 1:07am

  Thanks guys, good info. Now works almost out of the box with vmware 1.0.6. still no NIC until you manually run the vmware tools setup but that gave me sound too.