VMWare: Windows 7 Ethernet is Missing

Abigail Nering February 20, 2011 17 Comments

I recently created a VM for Windows 7 and proceeded to waste hours trying to figure out why the Ethernet controller was missing from the Device Manager. Installing VMWare Tools didn’t fix the issue, tracking down the correct Ethernet driver didn’t help; other people that created the same Virtual Machine were not having problems (of course), just me. Fixing the problem is easier than you may think…

Shut Down your Virtual Machine completely, suspending it will NOT work!
Find the main .vmx file for your Virtual Machine, right click, and choose Edit
Look for the line:
```
ethernet0.addressType = "generated"
```
Once you’ve located the line, ABOVE it enter the following code:
```
ethernet0.virtualDev = "e1000"
```
Save the file and power on your Windows 7 Virtual Machine. It should automatically detect the network adapter and install the components.
Join your domain (if necessary).

17 comments

Stan Rawrysz
November 27, 2016 at 1:01 pm

Thanks! This still works for VMware fusion 8.5

ozz
November 19, 2013 at 6:30 am

Thank you very much!

davidn
February 19, 2013 at 12:39 am

Thanks a lot for sharing!

egg
January 17, 2013 at 7:28 am

for two days i was unable to work…… Thanks very much !!

Lukaj
August 24, 2012 at 6:56 am

I’m going crazy all this morning ! Thanks a lot..now it works !

Lucky
August 3, 2012 at 9:47 am

Abigail you rock mate………..this helped me in getting my issue fixed.

LynnL
October 17, 2011 at 12:51 pm

You are amazing! I virtualized a Win7HP 64-bit and ran into this issue. Only your advice resolved it.

Guest
July 24, 2011 at 4:52 am

Thank you very much.
This solved the problem immediately. It is very easy after all, after trying to figure if it was because I was using bridge or NAT and trying to change firewall configs.

Thanks a lot!

chaoz
April 21, 2011 at 1:37 am

Thanks a bunch! After reading some FAQs, I was looking for the e1000 setting in vmware workstation, but couldn't find it.

Brysy
April 15, 2011 at 5:18 am

after much searching, I followed your steps and my VM is now working fine! Many thanks!

HappyJoe
March 6, 2011 at 10:48 am

Both lines are in my BootCamp.vmx 'e1000' on line 13 and 'generated' on line 57. Fusion works fine with XP and many Linuxes…

windwalkertrotter
March 5, 2011 at 9:19 pm

Not sure how you figured this one out but it sure saved me a lot of time…..

Thanks!

zootyboy
March 1, 2011 at 8:08 am

> other people that created the same Virtual Machine were not having problems (of course), just me.

not just you 🙂

thank you very much.