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Last active April 20, 2023 16:23
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My own personal documentation for running legacy versions of Windows (notably Vista) under modern versions of VMware.
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VMware-Legacy-Windows.md

Audio issues (stuttering, crackling)

Comment out this line from your VMX file: sound.virtualDev = "hdaudio"

If you don't want to do that, change the audio format settings in Windows to "24 bit, 44100 Hz (Studio Quality)" or higher, which greatly improves (※ but does not completely fix) the issue.

See this for more info: https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2012007

Windows Vista SP2

While VMware Tools 11.0.6 is technically the last version of VMware Tools that is compatible with Vista, all versions of VMware Tools starting from 11.0.0 actually ship with a broken GPU driver that has severe Aero performance issues, completely broken/missing OpenGL acceleration support, and will cause WinSAT to hang forever.

To fix this, we'll have to install VMware Tools 11.0.6 and then manually downgrade the GPU driver to the last working version (8.16.1.24 built on 2019/02/05), which was shipped with VMware Tools 10.3.10.

  1. Mount the ISO for VMware Tools 11.0.6 and install it normally.
  2. Reboot when prompted to.
  3. Mount the ISO for VMware Tools 10.3.10.
  4. Run setup64 /a in a Command Prompt window.
  5. When prompted for a "network location", just create a folder somewhere (for example, on your Desktop) and pick it.
  6. Wait for extraction to complete.
  7. Open the extracted folder and navigate to VMware/VMware Tools/VMware/Drivers/video_wddm/Vista. If you see the file vm3d.inf, then you are in the right place.
  8. Open Device Manager (devmgmt.msc).
  9. Right click on Display Adapters → VMware SVGA 3D and open the Properties.
  10. Fully uninstall the driver, making sure to check the "Delete the driver software for this device." box.
  11. Refresh the device list if necessary.
  12. Install the drivers for vm3d.inf.
  13. You're done! You can verify that OpenGL acceleration is working using wglinfo: https://github.com/gkv311/wglinfo/releases

※ NOTE: These instructions may or may not work with versions of Windows Vista older than SP2. To be more specific, I haven't tested them with anything older.

Also, if you're a fellow Vista Appreciator™, you may also be interested in my other project — VistaAlwaysGlass, which prevents Windows Vista from disabling Aero Glass transparency when windows are maximised (much like what the now-defunct tweak VistaGlazz did).

Windows 7 SP1 without KB4474419

If you have… some kind of strange reason to not want to install KB4474419 on a Windows 7 SP1 system, VMware Tools 11.1.1 is the last version that will (mostly?) work without it.

※ NOTE: I haven't really tested this configuration thoroughly as my Windows 7 VM is fully patched.

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