I have an old Windows NT4 partition that I wanted to set up as a virtual machine. I did so and everything went smoothly and I can boot it as a virtual machine - and installed vmtools - but there is no AMD PCnet Ethernet adapter present. There is no real PCnet adapter on the machine and so there was no PCnet driver installed originally; but on other Windows virtual machines, vmtools installed the driver and the adapter appeared without my having to do anything. I was hoping that installing vmtools would automatically create the virtual PCnet ethernet adapter.
I see this problem mentioned in one of the vmware docs:
"Windows NT4 Ethernet Adapter Not Migrated Correctly -- If your virtual
machine or system image does not have an AMD PCnet-PCI-II compatible Ethernet
adapter, it can migrate improperly.
Workaround: After you import a Windows NT4 virtual machine, install a new virtual
Ethernet adapter, and then install VMware Tools. "
I tried this using two different sources for the adapter driver, and re-installing vmtools with "repair" option after each one, and neither worked:
. the AMD PCnet driver provided with Windows NT -
after vmtools and reboot, ctlPanel->"Devices" shows device as "automatic"
and when I try to start it - "file missing" and won't start
. the AMD PCnetHL driver from AMD download site -
after vmtools and reboot, ctlPanel->"Devices" shows device as "automatic"
and when I try to start it - "Device is not functioning" and won't start
Does anyone else have a working virtual PCnet Ethernet adapter under Win NT4? That I could get from you? Or is there any other ethernet adapater that I could get working in a virtual WinNT4? Also I'm curious - on Win2K, where does vmtools get the adapter driver from? Is it somewhere buried in the vmware distrib and I could get it off that?