Wanted to share a new VMware blog by Elliott Stewart for the personal desktop product documentation. The new blog addresses documentation questions, provides troubleshooting tips, and provides fresh information on Workstation, Fusion, Player, and ACE.

http://blogs.vmware.com/vanswers/

You can RSS-subscribe to the blog or follow Elliot on Twitter at @elliottvmw.

Welcome Elliot!

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Finding vAnswers blog

• No network connection after upgrading Fusion 2 and Windows XP (1016466)
• Troubleshooting Fusion 3 network issues in a Windows 7 virtual machine (1017565)

The second one is specific to problems with a Windows 7 VMs, the first deals with changes in the network connection handling between Fusion 2 and Fusion 3 and changes in network drivers between Windows XP and later versions.

If you are running into networking issues with Fusion lately, definitely check out these two articles, they can save you a lot of time and frustration.

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Top 2 Issues for Fusion Users

My first thought was that this probably would introduce some performance issues, but then it hit me that this would cause the incorrect VMware Tools to get installed in the VM, leading to all sorts of unintended behaviors. Even worse, if the correct MCA/MCE architecture is not presented to the guest during boot I don’t think it will start at all. We use guest OS type to get this info (it only matters during boot as far as I know).

How to fix it:

1. Power off the VM.
2. Modify via GUI option General of the properties of your VM.
3. Power on the VM.
4. Reinstall the correct VMware Tools.

Anybody know of any more gotchas associated with having the wrong OS type specified for your VM?

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Impact of wrong OS type for VMs

In case you haven’t heard, VMware Fusion is the most seamless way to run Windows on your Mac without rebooting. Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal reviewed Fusion last Thursday (http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20070802/fusion-is-latest-way-for-macs-to-operate-windows-pc-software/)and since then we have seen a plethora of press coverage. List price is said to be $79.99 per user.

While I have not had a chance to test Fusion myself, I hear it is very fast, stable, and the install just works.
Minimum Requirements for VMware Fusion
* An Intel-based Mac (to run 64-bit operating systems, an Intel Mac with a Core 2 Duo or Xeon processor is required)

• 512MB of RAM (1 GB or more recommended)
• 275MB free disk space for VMware Fusion
• 1GB free disk space for each virtual machine (10 GB or more recommended)
• Mac OS X version 10.4.9 or later

Features of VMware Fusion:

• VMware Fusion virtual machines can use 32-bit and 64-bit guest operating systems.
• VMware Fusion supports Windows, Linux, and Solaris operating systems in virtual machines.
• Virtual machines can have multiple virtual processors, taking advantage of the Intel Core Duo chips in Intel Macs.
• VMware Fusion supports high-speed USB 2.0 for a huge range of devices. Even devices that do not have drivers for Mac OS X will work in a virtual machine.
• Cut and paste text between your Mac and your virtual machines, drag and drop files, and create shared folders on your computer so you can easily share files and folders.
• Unity view displays your Windows virtual machine applications directly on your Mac desktop.

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VMware Fusion Released

VMware Desktop Virtualization for Mac

Some new features include:

• Experimental 3D graphics (gamers rejoice!)
• Snapshots (nice!)
• Run Microsoft Vista (no thanks ;^)
• Improved Networking & Virtual Hardware (VMware – you rock!)

See the release notes for more details.

See this blog entry and join the Fusion discussion!

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Fusion Beta 2 Released

Overview of the 3D capabilities of VMware virtual machines, including gaming

Screencast of the new beta version of the VMware Fusion, great virtualization tool for Mac

Vmware fusion demo at vmworld

Technorati Tags: Fusion, MAC, Vmware, VMWare Fusion

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Mac OS X VMware Fusion Demo