ReactOS can't load drivers for hardware in VMWare Player

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guygreg
Posts: 1
Joined: Wed Dec 28, 2016 1:57 am

ReactOS can't load drivers for hardware in VMWare Player

Post by guygreg »

I have tried installing ReactOS 0.4.3 using the latest BootCD, available from here:
http://reactos.org/download
I've done it on two separate physical computers, one with an AMD A-10 and one with an Intel Core i3. In both cases I am installing it into VMWare Workstation Player 12 (a current release).

In both cases, the install seems to go correctly. After the first boot you get the ReactOS Setup Wizard and I chose the default/typical options. On the second boot (when you are supposed to be able to use the computer), I get popups saying "Welcome This wizard installs a new device driver for:"
I then have a choice of Install Driver Automatically or Install Driver from specific location. Both fail to be able to install a driver.

The devices which fail to install are:
System Device
Multimedia Device

If I go into Control Panel and try to use the Add Hardware wizard, I get "please wait while the wizard searches", which never goes away (I have to click Cancel).
As you would suspect, I have no audio.

Also, there's no apparent way to get to the web. Neither the desktop nor anything under Start|Programs has a link to a browser of any kind. If I start up Applications Manager, it shows that there's something called "Wine Gecko" installed, which I think is a browser, but there's no way to get it to run. I have to choose Firefox and install it to get a browser.

My only other experience with ReactOS was in early 2016. I think at that time there were VMWare images available for download from the site. I tried both the last 0.3.X release and the 0.4 release that way and did not run into these issues. My ReactOS install from 8 months ago has audio and my new one doesn't, on the same hardware. This isn't a gripe, I just wanted to point these things out. I did try installing the Soundblaster Driver for VMWare from the Drivers section in the Applications Manager but that didn't resolve the issue.

Since so many people discovering ReactOS will likely be trying it in VMWare (or VirtualBox), it seems like it might be helpful to post a big obvious box on the download page, listing the optimal settings to choose when doing an install. For example, on how to treat the guest OS, I chose Windows XP Professional, but maybe if I'd chosen something else I'd have had better luck?

[EDIT]
OK, I did find this page:
https://reactos.org/wiki/VMware
Which indicates that audio does NOT work out of the box in VMWare and will take a little fiddling. Apologies for not reading that first. Apparently I WAS using pre-made VMWare images before, which had had the audio issue fixed. Windows XP Professional is the recommended OS to choose.
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