Connecting VMWare Player 5 or Workstation 9.0 to Internet

I learned the hard way and many restless nights why VM Player sucks and a serious developer should consider buying VMware Workstation 9.0

The primary difference between VM Player version and WorkStation 9 are the following:

1. Player is free, WS 9 is $250.00
2. Player does not have any OOB networking functionality, WS 9 does
3. Player does not have "snap shots" for VMs, WS 9 does

If you have difficulty connecting your VM Player to internet it is most likely because of the "auto bridging" feature built into VM Player. This feature plagued my system until I got fed up and uninstalled/reinstalled VM Player.

The problem with the "auto bridge" feature is that you are not allowed to configure any settings. If you are unsuccessful the first time connecting the vm to the internet, most likely you have already corrupted the settings of the VM and have to uninstall it (or another option is to repair the settings, but that is beyond my patience).

Here are the steps to install a VM player VM to the internet. If you want to play around with settings to get to know "why" and "how" the vm is connecting to the internet, then download the VM Workstation 9.0 trial. It is available for free for the first 60 days. It will give you the interface and UI needed to change all the networking settings yourself. Otherwise, try to follow my steps. If you have a clean install of VM Player, then you should be good. If the steps below do not work, you will need to uninstall/reinstall VM Player and try them again. I have tested the configuration several times now on Windows 7 and Windows 8 Laptops, so I know they will work for you.

1. Download VM Player
2. Create a new VM with networking card
3. Open up Network and Sharing Center on your Host Laptop
4.  Right-Click the Wi-Fi connection you have, on the Sharing Tab, click "share with..", then select your VM Ware Network card on the drop down. 
5.