Installing the new Beta 1 version of Microsoft Vista inside a VMWare session sounds like a walk in the park right? Not quite so.
The main problem is that VMWare Virtual Disks are seen by the installer as a RAW disk, and is this not supported in Beta 1.
There are two ways of overcoming this, the first is to install Windows XP Servicepack 2 inside the virtual machine, and then upgrade that install by using the Microsoft Vista upgrader.
The other, and much less time consuming, is to use diskpart to create a partition on the virtual disk, before starting the installation. To do this, boot the Microsoft Vista ISO image, and when the first graphical screen turns up press SHIFT+F10 to open a command prompt. Use the Diskpart utility to create a disk partition:
diskpart
select disk 0
create partition primary
Now, you can choose between formatting the partition straight away, by using the following commands (still inside diskpart).
select volume 1
format
or format the partition by using the Microsoft Vista installer interface.
Either way, you need to reboot the virtual machine and boot on the ISO again to make Vista find the newly created disk and partition. If you selected to format the drive by using Diskpart, install to the partition the installer found. If not, use the installer to format the partition before you can continue installing.
The installer doesn't recognize the VMWare virtual graphics adapter (but thats taken care of post install, by installing the VMware tools (VM menu->Install VMWare tools). That takes care of most of the drives needed, especially the network bit.
Added:
Seems I was jumping the gun a bit there, after installing the VMWare tools, Vista will still not find the correct driver for the VMWare Virtual NIC. To fix this, find the device manager and the non-functional network card. Make sure the "Install VMWare Tools" setting is set in VMWare. Right click the NIC, and select update driver. Browse to the D:\Program Files\VMWare tools\Drivers\vmxnet\win2k folder, and install the driver from there.
You will still be missing sound, which I don't find very important inside a virtualized session, but you can always download the "Driver release for SB PCI 128 Vibra / PCI 16" from creative.com to enable the sound as well.
52 Comments so far
Andrew Smith, on July 31, 2005 at 3:29pm, said:
Legend, thanks alot for this!
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somestuff, on July 31, 2005 at 6:05pm, said:
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...
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Andrew Smith, on July 31, 2005 at 6:42pm, said:
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.
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h0bbel, on July 31, 2005 at 6:46pm, said:
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.
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Christian, on July 31, 2005 at 11:09pm, said:
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
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h0bbel, on July 31, 2005 at 11:24pm, said:
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.
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Christian, on July 31, 2005 at 11:58pm, said:
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!
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somestuff, on August 1, 2005 at 7:59am, said:
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...
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somestuff, on August 1, 2005 at 12:19pm, said:
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!
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h0bbel, on August 1, 2005 at 1:12pm, said:
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....
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somestuff, on August 1, 2005 at 4:11pm, said:
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!
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h0bbel, on August 1, 2005 at 6:13pm, said:
Very Cool. :)
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alex_extreme, on August 4, 2005 at 6:27pm, said:
When exactly are you supposed to press Shift-F10? When I try that, nothing happens
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alex_extreme, on August 4, 2005 at 6:28pm, said:
Never mind, worked it out
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h0bbel, on August 4, 2005 at 6:31pm, said:
"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. ;)
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Assman, on August 8, 2005 at 4:17am, said:
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.
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OneTone, on August 20, 2005 at 4:41am, said:
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.
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h0bbel, on August 22, 2005 at 8:08pm, said:
Well, I haven't played with the Shared Folders bit. I probably should though.
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keith, on August 29, 2005 at 6:45am, said:
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.
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cozofdeath, on September 18, 2005 at 6:50pm, said:
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!
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h0bbel, on September 18, 2005 at 10:15pm, said:
In VMWare? Guess not, since that emulates a SB card.
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MAgix, on September 30, 2005 at 3:46pm, said:
I cant open the Command Prompt, i press SHIFT-F10 on the first GUI screen and nothing happen :(
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h0bbel, on September 30, 2005 at 7:12pm, said:
Well, it worked for me...
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senthilvijay, on October 2, 2005 at 12:51pm, said:
I really needed this info, well I will try it from office tomorrow
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senthilvijay, on October 3, 2005 at 4:18pm, said:
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
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Curry (ZL-NL), on October 26, 2005 at 4:05pm, said:
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!
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h0bbel, on October 26, 2005 at 6:28pm, said:
I had no problems with my one partition setup, but that might have changed in recent betas.
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Dan Wozzell, on October 27, 2005 at 9:50am, said:
In settings of the vmware (longhorn) add another disk - the setup files will be copied to this. I believe you can delete this after.
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tarionyx, on November 12, 2005 at 6:38am, said:
I'm installing longhorn beta1 on VMware 5.5 rc2 (18007) and I had to do the 2nd disk mod. Its finally installing :-/
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Christian, on November 12, 2005 at 10:17am, said:
I get to installation Step 2 and it freezes at about 10% through for ages please help!
Thanks xTiAn
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Chris, on November 14, 2005 at 4:00pm, said:
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.
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Chris, on November 14, 2005 at 5:13pm, said:
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...
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Chris, on November 14, 2005 at 6:26pm, said:
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)
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Mark, on December 1, 2005 at 4:50pm, said:
Anyone get the pretty GFX to activate? Any ideas on how to get that working?
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Guillaume Lafrance, on February 7, 2006 at 11:30pm, said:
Thanks for the guide!
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Jay, on February 26, 2006 at 7:40am, said:
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?
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Raul, on March 22, 2006 at 9:51pm, said:
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
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h0bbel, on March 22, 2006 at 11:23pm, said:
Excellent. Glad someone finds it useful!
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maverick, on June 19, 2006 at 12:27pm, said:
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
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CyberLJ, on September 2, 2006 at 2:46pm, said:
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?
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James Logsdon, on September 8, 2006 at 10:45pm, said:
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.
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Felu, on September 16, 2006 at 9:49am, said:
Thanks a lot :)
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jecoyote, on November 22, 2006 at 12:45am, said:
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
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jecoyote, on November 22, 2006 at 1:23am, said:
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
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Remote Support, on March 11, 2007 at 12:59am, said:
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.
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Bill, on March 15, 2007 at 8:10pm, said:
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?
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Bill, on March 15, 2007 at 8:11pm, said:
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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Trouble installing Vista on VMware - Windows, on March 28, 2007 at 3:58pm, said:
[...] I installed Vista on vmware I followed the following and it worked:h0bbel.p0ggel.org/item/i...-vista-in-vmwareJust remember after you format you MAY need to set the vmware bios to boot off the cd or iso [...]
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VMTN Discussion Forums: 1st Install of Windows Vista to ESX ..., on May 4, 2007 at 3:26pm, said:
[...] release version of Vista. The guy seems to have this working and Vista is using LSIlogic drivers: http://h0bbel.p0ggel.org/2005/07/30/installing-microsoft-vista-in-vmware/Quote: "SCSI disk (10gb) seen by Vista as a being attached to a LSI Ultra 320 SCSI 2000 Series, [...]
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Anonymous, on June 30, 2007 at 10:21am, said:
[...]
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Sindhu-S.Com » Blog Archive » Disposable Skills, on August 1, 2007 at 6:40pm, said:
[...] 7:00 -Looking at a pile of CDs. Must DO [...]
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DaveL, on August 8, 2008 at 1:07am, said:
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.
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