VMWare Rides Again

Yesterday I wrote in my blog about using the VMWare Player application with a VMXWizard to basically get a "free" VMWare Workstation software application on your machine. I ran into one snag however. The VMWare Player does not come with VMWare Tools for Windows and Linux. The VMWare Tools enable you to install SVGA drivers on a VMWare image. Without it you are stuck in 16 bit color ... YUCK!. After a little digging I found some downloads for you on the VMWare site. These links are:

Linux VMWare Tools: http://www.vmware.com/support/esx/doc/install_guest_esx.html
Windows VMWare Tools: http://www.vmware.com/support/kb/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=920

These pages come with full instructions but basically with the windows download you get a .iso image that you can mount by editing the .vmx file that configures your VMWare "machine". For example in my .vmx file this looks like:

ide1:0.filename="C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Desktop\VMWare Tools Install\windows.iso"
ide1:0.deviceType="cdrom-image"

After that you can run the setup off of your "CDROM" drive (the mounted image). That finalizes your ability to fully run VMWare on your system for free. Here is a picture of a loaded Windows 2000 server install running in VMWare: