Windows 7 Network issue/ Port shutting down when cat5 removed

dark_jedi_ire

Hi Folks,,

Ok, Been driving me Mad the last few hours,,, read so many forums my Brain feels like Mush..

Win 7 64 Bit Dell Precision laptop, running VM`s ( vmware 7) but when you remove the network Cable the Window 7 ethernet port stops functioning, Ip address ( static )disappears when you do and Ipconfig etc, Red x on Network
adapter to say cable Removed, but it means Ping also Stop`s functioning and I cannot Ping the VM`s( all working with cable and switch etc ) No Bridging etc installed, Vm ware Setup correctly, With Bridged networking etc,

Driving me nuts

Any ideas?

R

testicle

Em, that's what's supposed to happen.

cookie1977

Ye I'm not following either. What did you want it to do?

dark_jedi_ire

Em, Its should like in XP Still allow pinging of Hosted client Operating systems via vm ware This is a bug I think that started with vista,

Windows 7 static Ip 10.30.1.46
Windows 2008 ( VMware ) 10.30.1.200
Windows 2008 (VMware ) 10.30.1.201
All firewalls are disabled, Vm`s can ping each other no hassle,
I am not trying to Ping anything away from the laptop Just trying to connect to an IIS instance on the 2008 server, from the Physical Laptop, Works fine when Cable plugged in , stops when cable unplugged,, As above I am only connecting to the VM from the Host physical laptop.. so the NIC should have no impact but it gets shuts Down when you remove a Cable, which shouldnt make a difference,,,
R

dark_jedi_ire

Ok For example.

1 Laptop Win 7 64 Bit

2 Virtual MAchines, Windows 2008 Server.
Over Vmware 7

1 Network cable and 1 4 port Hub.( thats it, nothing more, no internet access etc)

Static Ip`s All connected Host Laptop can Ping both Vm`s and vice versa and Each other,

Problem-> All works fine until you remove the ethernet cable, the ethernet port in Windows 7 stops fuctioning and when you do an IP config, no result for the Adapter, then unable to Ping Both virtual Machines. But both VM`s Can Ping each other..
( It was losing its Static Ip when you unplug the cable but I found the Regedit Key Fix thats sorted that and now it hopes its Static in the network card properties)

DO a Ping -t on a command prompt on the Physical Laptop and one on a VM. pinging each other Reconnect cable wait a few Seconds and it all Starts working again...

Reason I need this is because it is for a Demo and the Boss dosnt want to have to run the web services from within the VM`s themselves he wants to have the Physical Laptops Firefox connect to the VM`s and work with Minimal equipment, ie without the network Cable and 4 port switch,,,

Thanks hope that clears things up a bit,, as mentioned head is melted thanks folks

cookie1977

No I got you now, sorry. I'm trying to think of something to help. I havent used vmware 7 (only 6.5). Have you tried repairing the bridge?

dark_jedi_ire

Yup, even reinstalled vmware,, ( 7 isnt Much different to 6.5 just extra features )

Just wondering if its a corrupt windows update or some little tool in win 7 that just tell`s it not to shutdown all services on the nic port if you remove the cable..

dont want to have to reinstall win 7

Have been though ever Setting I can in vmware, Host Bridged network, Nat,
and been through everything in win 7 from nic properties to power options,


Or am i just missing something through pure frustration...

Thanks

cookie1977

Did you have a look here? :
http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1016466

dark_jedi_ire

Thanks ,,,Have gone though all that, except for updating the Nic Drivers,
As it is resently built laptop with drivers from a couple of months ago..

R

Capt'n Midnight

That behaviour has been eratic across all versions of windows going back as far as 95 , dhcp releases and up/down wasn't totally predictable.

Ubuntu can drop IP too when cable is disconnected


Have you tried a static IP (out of curiousity)

What you want is a virtual Network Adapter (Microsoft Loopback ) which should allow you to connect to/from the VM, not sure if you need ip forwarding enabled to then route out to the interweb

http://www.sevenforums.com/network-sharing/3156-adding-virtual-network-adapter.html

Alun

Bugger, just wrote a lengthy reply, went back to edit it and lost it ..

Anyway, long story made short ... either use host-only networking (VMnet1) or install MS loopback adapter and set the virtual VMnet0 adapter to bridge to it. Windows firewall doesn't like either adapter and thinks they're public networks so blocks incoming connections so you'll either have to disable it altogether or there's a hack to make it ignore them which I can post again if necessary.

cookie1977

Alun wrote: »

Bugger, just wrote a lengthy reply, went back to edit it and lost it ..

Anyway, long story made short ... either use host-only networking (VMnet1) or install MS loopback adapter and set the virtual VMnet0 adapter to bridge to it. Windows firewall doesn't like either adapter and thinks they're public networks so blocks incoming connections so you'll either have to disable it altogether or there's a hack to make it ignore them which I can post again if necessary.

That's weird. This is the third time this post has been edited and each time after an edit it rises to the top of "my forums" list. How does it do that if it's only being edited. Sorry for taking this off topic but it's just weird.

Alun

Yeah, sorry about that, I noticed it too, I guess it sees each edit as a new post somehow.

BTW I've found a VMWare KB article about the Windows 7 firewall issue with host-only and NAT networking that gives some possible alternative solutions as well as the registry hack I mentioned.

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1004813

Alun

Capt'n Midnight kindly resurrected my post for me, so I'm posting it again here ...

---

As testicle says, when you're using bridged networking, that's what's supposed to happen, as all connections are being bridged through a physical NIC that is disabled because it's media is disconnected. In some circumstances in the past, 'media sense' (the mechanism by which windows detects whether a NIC is connected or not) either didn't work properly on some NIC's or drivers, or could be disabled, but it appears that the tricks to disable this in previous versions of windows don't work properly in Windows 7 for some reason.

So, to do what you want to do you need to configure both guests to use Host-Only networking. If you really want to use static addresses for the two guests, you'll have to do some messing in the Virtual Network Editor to manually set the subnet you want to assign to VMNet1 and disable VMWare's internal DHCP server, otherwise use the default subnet and keep DHCP running, and just make a note of the IP obtained when you start up the guests, it's up to you.

VMNet1 is always 'UP', so you can always route through it to the guest regardless of the state of the physical NIC in your host machine. You can check that there is indeed a valid route from the host through to the host-only subnet by typing 'route print -4' at a command prompt. Note that when you're testing this you can't ping the host using the IP assigned to the host's physical NIC, you'll have to ping the IP address of the host-only adapter, VMNet1 (set to xx.xx.xx.1 by default by the VMWare Virtual Network Editor.)

One snag .. Windows 7 firewall sees the host-only NIC VMNet1 as an unidentified 'public' network which is a PITA as it then uses a default profile that prohibits incoming connections to it, which may or may not be a problem for you depending on what you want to do with the guest. If you just want to access web server on the guest from the host, then this profile might be OK, you'll just have to try.

If it doesn't, you can change the settings for 'public' networks to allow incoming connections, but this is dangerous as this will also apply if you're using, say, a public wireless network, so there's a hack you can find here http://tinyurl.com/yc2e3q3 to tell Windows that these virtual NICs aren't real ones and to exclude them from the attention of Windows Firewall. You could always just temporarily disable the firewall altogether when you're giving the demo, but you'll have to ignore all the warnings that pop up which might not look too professional.

Any more questions, just ask