Sunday, March 20, 2011

Experience with installing VMware Server 2.0 on windows 7

I was helping a friend to install Ubuntu 10.10 Linux on Windows 7 using VMware server 2.0.

I  had few hiccups, but finally could do it.
  • Installation of VMware Server was a breeze.  No issue found in downloading and installing.  Just follow the instructions given in VMware site. 
  • After VMware Server was installed, you would see few entries  at "Start"  of windows 7,  All Programs->VMWare->VMware Server->VMware Server Home Page.   Click on it.   It opens your browser.
  • It asks for user name and password.  This is where I was stuck.  I was giving all my windows 7 user names and passwords, it could not succeed.  Finally, I found from searching VMware site that VMware server always expects the user name "Administrator".  By default windows 7 does not enable administrator account with "Administrator" name.  To do this, you need to execute following command at the command line prompt. 
    • Command window must be opened with "Run as Administrator".  You can do this by going to "All Programs->Accessories".  Here you would see "Command Prompt".  Take your cursor there and press right click on that line.  You would see "Run as Administrator".  Click on that. It opens the command prompt window.
    • There you should type "net user administrator /active:yes".  This would be enable hidden "Administrator" user.
    • Next step is to assign the password to "Administrator" user.  Go to 'Control Panel->User Accounts and Family Safety->Add or remove user accounts".  Here you would see "Administrator" user. Click on it and add a password to it.
  • Now you should be able to login in to the VMware server using "Administrator" and password you have set for the user.
  • Then I was trying to install Ubuntu.  First step is to create a virtual machine. You could do this using "Virtual machine" menu.  Click on "Create Virtual Machine" item.  It takes you to set of screens to assign the memory,  hard drive space,  network etc..  These are all simple and you could follow the documentation.  As far as the Ubuntu image is concerned, I thought I could have iso image in my windows hard drive somewhere and could point to that. But I was not successful in giving the path for ISO image anywhere.  Finally I decided to burn the ISO image on CD and selected 'DVD' option.
  • So far so good.
  • Once the virtual machine is created, I started it.  I wanted to see the console of virtual machine. Selected "console" menu.   It asked to install a plugin.  Clicked on it, it installed the plugin. Then it asked me to click on anywhere on the window to open the console.  Unfortunately, I keep getting error that "request timed out".  Finally, I found that Firefox can't be used to open the console.  So, make sure that you always use "Internet Explorer".  Once I started using Internet Explorer, I could see new console window getting opened.
  • After that,  ubuntu installation started on that console window and now I have ubuntu working on Windows 7 using VMware 2.0
Hope it helps.

Srini

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