HowTo: Windows (XP) on Ubuntu with VMWare Server

[rhino_harley]

Working at last. I hava a SATA drive, but for some reason windows sees it as an IDE drive, whereas linux sees it is a SATA drive. To fix this I had to manually edit my .vmdk file to:

ddb.adapterType = "ide"

and my .vmx file to sche all instances of scsi0 to ide0. Voila, windows is running. Only problem I have now is that I can't fullscreen windows at my full resolution (1920x1440), but I can live with that.

[Alceal]

I've got this problem:

Extracting the sources of the vmnet module.

Building the vmnet module.

Using 2.6.x kernel build system.
make: se ingresa al directorio `/tmp/vmware-config0/vmnet-only'
make -C /lib/modules/2.6.17-10-386/build/include/.. SUBDIRS=$PWD SRCROOT=$PWD/. modules
make[1]: se ingresa al directorio `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.17-10-386'
CC [M] /tmp/vmware-config0/vmnet-only/driver.o
CC [M] /tmp/vmware-config0/vmnet-only/hub.o
CC [M] /tmp/vmware-config0/vmnet-only/userif.o
CC [M] /tmp/vmware-config0/vmnet-only/netif.o
CC [M] /tmp/vmware-config0/vmnet-only/bridge.o
CC [M] /tmp/vmware-config0/vmnet-only/procfs.o
CC [M] /tmp/vmware-config0/vmnet-only/smac_compat.o
SHIPPED /tmp/vmware-config0/vmnet-only/smac_linux.x386.o
LD [M] /tmp/vmware-config0/vmnet-only/vmnet.o
Building modules, stage 2.
MODPOST
WARNING: could not find /tmp/vmware-config0/vmnet-only/.smac_linux.x386.o.cmd for /tmp/vmware-config0/vmnet-only/smac_linux.x386.o
CC /tmp/vmware-config0/vmnet-only/vmnet.mod.o
LD [M] /tmp/vmware-config0/vmnet-only/vmnet.ko
make[1]: se sale del directorio `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.17-10-386'
cp -f vmnet.ko ./../vmnet.o
make: se sale del directorio `/tmp/vmware-config0/vmnet-only'
Unable to make a vmnet module that can be loaded in the running kernel:
insmod: error inserting '/tmp/vmware-config0/vmnet.o': -1 File exists
There is probably a slight difference in the kernel configuration between the
set of C header files you specified and your running kernel. You may want to
rebuild a kernel based on that directory, or specify another directory.

For more information on how to troubleshoot module-related problems, please
visit our Web site at "http://www.vmware.com/download/modules/modules.html" and
"http://www.vmware.com/support/reference/linux/prebuilt_modules_linux.html".

Execution aborted.

[icehammer]

I did everything as shown in the guide above.. windows installed, and sound and all is working fine.. but i can't see my other drives!!! how am i supposed to install my software?? it only shows C:, D: [cd] ... what did i do wrong?? what to do now?

[icehammer]

i did

sudo -i

to make myself a root, then added a physical drive to the virtual drive.. it added, but when i power on (even as root), it says i don't have permissions.. why??

[Thinh]

Everyting seems to be working but the only thing is it runs really slow, it has been taking over 1 hours to install windows is this right and what is the good size for memory. I increased it to the maximum recommend and it seems to run slower now than the 256 which it was defaulted too.

i choose ntfs when i format the format does that have anything to do why it i so slow for me?
does this image act as a folder so if i want something to show up in windows just go in the folder and add a new folder?

[techstop]

Everyting seems to be working but the only thing is it runs really slow, it has been taking over 1 hours to install windows is this right and what is the good size for memory. I increased it to the maximum recommend and it seems to run slower now than the 256 which it was defaulted too.

i choose ntfs when i format the format does that have anything to do why it i so slow for me?
does this image act as a folder so if i want something to show up in windows just go in the folder and add a new folder?

How much memory does your host OS have? You need to have enough to run both your host (Linux) and the guest (Windows). I have 1GB RAM and I've allocated 512MB to Windows guest OS. It's still a little sluggish. If you have anything less than 1GB I'd imagine that it would be very slow indeed. If you have allocated more than 512MB and you have 1GB of Linux memory, then there would be a lot of hard drive thrashing as virtual memory gets used. Is your hard drive activity light constantly on?

[gvoima]

Well I've got some problems too with it being slow, but if you're using a laptop or have frequency scaling there is slowdowns with that. It's a known problem and you should disable it.
But even that didn't help with me, on my home computer it runs beautifully, I have 1280megs of memory and allocate 512 to the VM. The same that I have on my home machine.

[Thinh]

I have 2g of ddr2 on my laptop I have a Dell precision M70. Windows seems to work fine but the maximazing and minimazing is very sluggish for some reason. Which is a better approach use the 2g divided partion or use the whole predetermine hd set. Also is there any performance gain if you can work it with sata instead of ata. I have sata on my machine but when i try to install it under sata windows doest recognize it even thought it does recognize it on a stand alone installation of windows. to be honest the only software my work required to use windows is ms access other than that i would have trash windows long time ago
i am trying to get away from dual booting.

[depele]

when I :

depele@Kubuntu:~$ vmware

I get

X Error: BadDevice, invalid or uninitialized input device 168
  Major opcode:  145
  Minor opcode:  3
  Resource id:  0x0
Failed to open device
X Error: BadDevice, invalid or uninitialized input device 168
  Major opcode:  145
  Minor opcode:  3
  Resource id:  0x0
Failed to open device

I have been looking around but didn't find a lot

thanks.

[Enverex]

Just incase anyone is still following this I have to recommend VirtualBox above VMWare, the performance is much better (really was supprised, I was expecting VB to be a bit slower).