Monthly Archives: February 2009

VMware – Windows AMD PCNet Family Adapater Issue

Since we have ESX, I usually don’t get to spend much time playing around with VMware-Server. Interested to see the new interface in VMware-Server 2, I installed it on one of my CentOS servers.dm

The installation was a breeze with the rpm package and running the configuration script was pretty flawless. So I logged in through the Remote Management Console (https/port 8333), and created a fresh host. After copying over a Win2k3 iso, mounted the image and began the installation.

(On a side note I was doing this remotely, and found out that in order to use the Remote Console Client, I needed to allow ports 8333 and 902 through the firewall)

The initial Windows installation zipped right through, however, when I went to configure the network adapter none was listed. So I took a look at the Device Manager and BAM!
This device cannot start. (Code 10)

Having never come across this on VMware/Windows installation, I decided to reinstall my Windows host. Same thing.. So let’s install the driver.. that we need to download.. with no network card..

Lucky for us we have VMware! Downloaded the latest PCNet Family drivers for Windows 2003, tossed them in an .iso image, and mounted it to the Virtual CD-Rom for the host. Once I extracted/updated the driver, everything was running smooth again.

Download the .iso image here: AMD Driver v4
MD5: 78159679b644e64c0ca5618bc4de1995