This is a strange one that’s been perplexing me. VMWare Fusion 1.1.3, running WinXP SP2 solid as a rock for nearly 9 months. I use a NAT networking configuration on my XP VM, relying on my Macbook Pro host to establish a wired/wireless connection to the web, which is then shared by the VM. As I say – s-o-l-i-d as a rock!
Recently though I noticed an increasing trend of the XP VM networking manager informing me that the XP networking connection was partially configured after a failed initialisation, and therefore offered limited functionality – which meant NO connection in reality.
I trawled the web/forums for support but predictably stumbled across the same mix of affliction and useless assistance like “..er…reinstall everyting and that should do it” from “yours faithfully the new guy on the support desk just trying to make a living by reading page 1 of the firefighting guide” or the equally ridiculous and unhelpful help from the geek who believes packing as many three-letter-acronyms into every uttered statement as possible.
Ultimately I drew a blank on the support front which was very disappointing. I did however happen across an innocuous statement relating to DHCP and some kind of limitation when acquiring IP addresses over a wireless link. As such I began musing about whether ‘things’ or ‘services’ in my XP startup may be interfering with my XP IP stack obtaining full configuration. However, logic was screaming at me that all services using IP rely on the underlying IP stack to obtain it’s address which is then shared by port number specific socket users…but still I went with the flow…
What follows cannot be explained (by me anyhow) in scientific terms. I opened XP servivce manager, and stopped a range of services like Postgres, Mysql, Sqlserver, and some others I wasn’t clear on the use of. That was the only change I made.
To my surprise, my rock-solid XP VM stability returned with guaranteed networking every time ! I offer this post not as a technically enriching article, but as a last stop for those as desperate as I was when afflicted by this intermittent yet highly painful symptom !
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In hindsight, based on my more recent post about my XP VM losing DNS, this intermittent networking issue ‘could’ have been rooted in the same XP firewall issue albeit a more intermittent option. See this post for details http://thestewscope.wordpress.com/2008/10/25/vmware-fusion-xp-vm-losing-dns/
Started having the same problem this morning on my MBP trying to run an instance of XP – networking just died using bridged mode. Restarted, and it couldn’t get an IP address via DHCP.
Found your page whilst trying to fix it, and thought I’d have a look. The first service I stopped – Wireless Zero Configuration – did the trick immediately. Seems suspiciously faster too..