VSphere and Windows 7 / Windows 2008 R2

November 10, 2009 Ed Goad

It appears that VSphere (VMware 4.0) does not fully support the latest releases of Windows. Luckily there are some published workarounds.

Running Windows 7 or 2008 R2 as a VM
This is a simple fix – just dont use the VMware SVGA driver on the OS, instead use the generic Windows driver. It may also help to reconfigure hardware accelleration to OFF
http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?cmd=displayKC&docType=kc&externalId=1011709&sliceId=1&docTypeID=DT_KB_1_1&dialogID=47064540&stateId=0%200%2047326772

Running the VCenter client on Windows 7 or 2008 R2
This is a little more complicated and requires some tweaking of the system configuration. In my experience, its still a little shaky and has some stability problems.
http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?cmd=displayKC&docType=kc&externalId=1014316&sliceId=1&docTypeID=DT_KB_1_1&dialogID=47064540&stateId=0%200%2047326772