Month: June 2010

Windows 7 Aero in VMWare Server 2.0.2

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I use the free VMWare Server 2.0.2 to host my virtual machines (our current workstation images) for development and troubleshooting.  We’re in progress of migrating our desktops to Windows 7 with Office 2010, so naturally I have a VM with the image that we are deploying.  Normally this isn’t a problem.  However, I have experienced a few problems with Win7 on VMWare Server 2:

  1. Graphics fail to function after installing VMWare Tools and only shows a blank black screen once Windows starts
  2. The VM hangs when doing some “intense” graphics processing.  What I really mean by this is the VM will lock up if you do anything too quickly…like browsing the Internet.
  3. The fancy Aero graphics does not function (e.g. Windows is running in “basic” graphics mode)

My solutions to these are

  1. When installing the VMWare Tools, do not install the VGA graphics driver
  2. Increase the VM’s video RAM size by adding the below line to the .vmx file (this particular value equals 64 MB)
    svga.vramSize = “64000000”
  3. OK, so I don’t have this one working yet, but I’m getting there :-)  If you know the answer, please share!
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