VMware Adapter Cannot Be Part of Windows Network Bridge

I came across over the weekend a bridging issue with VMware Workstation and my hosting machine which runs Windows 7 Enterprise x64. This error was giving me a headache, but the first thing I did was do some research and I found out that this issue goes back as far with Windows XP. You would think that VMware would have fixed this issue by now. From the research I found, you need to configure two registry settings to complete the bridging between the actual Network Adapter that provides you Internet access and the VMnet8 or VMnet1. VMnet8 and VMnet1 are VMware virtual Ethernet adapters.

Here is how you fix the bridging issue between your hosting machine and VMware workstation.

Step 1: I did a ipconfig command within command prompt to check the Virtual IP address because the IP address is different. I want to use a 192.168.1.x subnet on my virutal machine.

Step 2: VMware workstation allows you to configure your network as a bridged, but it doesn’t work. Well, it doesn’t work for me at least.

Step 3: As you can see, I changed the network adapter settings to bridge mode and the virtual machine tries to get an IP address but no luck.

Step 4: Okay, I tried to out-smart VMware Workstation and create a bridge on my the host machine.

Step 5: Everything seems like it’s working but out of nowhere I get the following error message:

Step 6: I did some research and found out there are some registry settings that need to be modified to make your bridge work with VMware Workstation and you local machine.

Step 7: Remember you will see “4D36E972-E325″ key several times. Make sure you find the one with the ‘Default’ key stating ‘Network Adapters”

Step 8: Expand your Network Adapter key to view all the sub-keys. Again, go over each subkey to locate your VMnet8 or VMnet1. [note: VMnet has numbers that might not match yours so they can be different, so don’t worry]

Step 9: Create your DWORD key “AllowBindingToMacBridge” with a value of 1

Step 10: Once you create your DWORD key “AllowBindingToMacBridge”  within your local/host machine. Go back to your local/host machine and right-click on your network bridge and go to Properties.

Step 11: Now, you should be able to add your VMware network adapter(s) to your bridge.

Step 12: Your IPv4 Connectivity will say “Not Connected” that will take some time to update itself. But take a look at your send & received traffic – that’s a good thing.

Step 13: Now, you should be to change your Network Adapter in your Virtual Machine. For some reason, I used VMnet1 and it wasn’t working for me. I changed to VMnet8(NAT) and recevied an IP address. The IP address was the same as what I started, but now I’m able to assign a 192.168.1.x IP address and get Internet access.

Step 14: Within the virtual machine I right-clicked on the Ethernet adapter and went to Properties.

Step 15: Within the properties I changed the IP address to a 192.168.1.x IP address, which is the same as the host machine.

Step 16: I did an “ipconfig” command within the virtual machine and I was able to ping out with no issues.

 

This issue was a strange one for me. I had to do too many hops and loops to get the bridge mode to work with my local/host machine and my virtual machines. Some of you might be lucky and get it to work by going into your virtual machine settings and changing your network adapter to “Bridged”. If you get it to works for you using only VMware wosktation settings let me know at the comment section below.