Vista network driver bug

[Arwin]

This one is affecting me - pretty annoying. I can't install VMWare because of it and I can't install/update an nForce driver either (less problematic).

It offers a hotfix that isn't properly tested yet according to its comments, but I also can't download it (weird system with password protected link).

Also see: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/950570

Anyone else affected by this?

 

[Richard]

Microsoft has a few of these hotfixes which are not publically available. This is usually because they have known issues and the issue they're supposed to fix is not (yet) widespread enough so you have to ring MS directly to get a download link. See if The Hotfix Share has it.

 

[Arwin]

Yeah, but it emailed me with a link and a password, but that link didn't work this afternoon. But it works now though and I've installed it, so I'm going to retry installing VMWare ... here's hoping it works this time! I've been stupid enough to not realise that it was VMWare that caused it initially so I've actually tried to install that twice and have had to sys-restore twice, each time undoing a bunch of other updates and installs. Doh.

 

[Arwin]

Thankfully it worked, and everything is up and running.

I'll say this much though - I've suggested in my company that we could probably actually get away with installing a minimal Linux on a laptop with just VMWare on it, and from the looks of it, that seems to actually be true.

 

[Frank]

That's how the VMware enterprise solutions work. The Linux part is even open source and downloadable from their site, only the VMware tools are closed.

The only issue I have with that solution for a laptop, is that most MS development software (like VS and SQL server) refuses to use a share to store data. So you have to use the virtual drive to store your work on.

 

[Arwin]

Can't you mount a section of a share as a virtual drive into your VMWare though? That's what most of our clients do. I think with a SAN solution you can even assign a specific piece of hardware and use practically the native drivers to get an almost maximum performance level.