VM-Aware

I know that most VMware administrators will have seen this more than a few times over the years, if you often carry out P2Vs. Given that I work for a Value Added Reseller I do P2Vs all the time and repeatedly get asked the question why do I get the following errors:

Warning - Multiple default gateways are intended to provide redundancy to a single network (such as an intranet or the Internet). They will not function properly when the gateways are on two separate, disjoint networks (such as one on your intranet and one on the internet). Do you want to save this configuration?

Or this one:

The IP address XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX you have entered for this network adapter is already assigned to another adapter Name of adapter. Name of adapter is hidden from the network and Dial-up Connections folder because it is not physically in the computer or is a legacy adapter that is not working. If the same address is assigned to both adapters and they become active, only one of them will use this address. This may result in incorrect system configuration. Do you want to enter a different IP address for this adapter in the list of IP addresses in the advanced dialog box?

I’m sure that most of you are aware of how to fix these errors, but some might not. Even though I see them all the time I do have a habit of forgetting the syntax of some of the commands.

Firstly, a quick explanation as to why this happening. When using a P2V tools, VMware Converter or PowerConvert for instance, for Windows Operating Systems, references to the old physical network cards remain in the registry.

Now this is not usually a problem if you or your customer tends to use DHCP, however, if the old physical NIC had a static IP assigned and you try to assign the very same IP and/or the same default gateway you’ll see one of the messages above.

Fortunately, these problems is easily rectified by following these simple steps:

• Open a command prompt
• type set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1
• DO NOT CLOSE THE COMMAND PROMPT *
• type start devmgmt.msc (you may need to cd to the correct directory first - cd\%SystemRoot%\System32)
• In Device Manager select View>Show Hidden Devices (Thanks Duncan!!)
• All you need to do now is expand the Network Adaptors node and simply right-click>uninstall the ghosted (slightly transparent) adapter(s)

This should now allow you to go back and assign the old IP addresses to the new virtual network cards.

* - Closing the command prompt will set the show_nonpresent_devices variable back to 0 and stop the ghosted devices from being displayed.

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Tags: Virtual Machines, VMware

This entry was posted on Monday, June 9th, 2008 at 5:26 pm and is filed under VMware, Virtualisation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.