Making your own virtual machines for VMware Player

VMware Player is a free, cut down version of VMware Workstation which enables you to run virtual machines created with other VMware products. But you can’t create your own new VMs with it. At least, not within the interface.

Here are a few links to help you create a new virtual machine for use with VMware Player. For example, if you want to try out the Windows 7 Beta:

http://www.ffnn.nl/pages/articles/linux/vmware-player-image-creation.php explains how to create a .vmx file (the VMware configuration file) and provides a couple of blank .vmdk (VMware virtual disks) that you can download – they’re a couple of KB each – you won’t be downloading 10GB of 0s!

To add a sound card, add the following lines to the .vmx file:

sound.present = “TRUE” sound.virtualDev = “es1371” sound.fileName = “-1” sound.autodetect = “TRUE”

(Thanks to http://kelvinchufei.blogspot.com/2007/01/add-sound-card-driver-in-vmware.html)

And if you are installing Windows 7, then you need at least 512MB of memory in your virtual machine. I’m trying with that amount… not sure it will be pleasant!