topic Re: Is the simulator still supported for either vmware player or native windows? in Simulator Discussions

Is the simulator still supported for either vmware player or native windows?

WSANDERSATFLEXERA — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 05:43:02 GMT

I could only find TGZ-balls of the simulator available for download. When gunzipped, the resulting tarfile is a bundle of vmdk files, and is not in a form than vmware player 6 (the current version) can import. Player 6 only supports .vmx, .wmc, .ova, and .ovf files.

Since there are no longer any free vmware products that are installable on Windows 7, is there a way I can get the simluator?

Or are the ISO versions Live CDs?

Re: Is the simulator still supported for either vmware player or native windows?

martinbreidenbach — Thu, 13 Feb 2014 13:37:07 GMT

It should contain a VMX file. I just did install VSIM with cDOT 8.2 yesterday on VMware WS10 and there was a VMX file.

(and then I merged the split vmdk files into one file, updated to cDOT 8.2P5 and replaced the 1GB simulated disks with using 4GB ones).

Re: Is the simulator still supported for either vmware player or native windows?

WSANDERSATFLEXERA — Thu, 13 Feb 2014 18:27:08 GMT

The vmx file contains only parameters pointing to VMDK files. Once I copy the VMDK files it refers to (DataONTAP-flat, DataONTAP-var, DataONTAP-nvram, DataONTAP-sim) over to the same directory as the VMX file I get an error "Error while powering on: The file specified is not a virtual disk."

I'll try copying all of the VMDK files and see what happens.

Re: Is the simulator still supported for either vmware player or native windows?

WSANDERSATFLEXERA — Thu, 13 Feb 2014 20:32:30 GMT

Well, the VM starts but it crashes and ends up stuck in a pepetual crash-and-reboot cycle. The error is erased on screen too quickly to see. This whole setup seems not ready for prime time 😞

Re: Is the simulator still supported for either vmware player or native windows?

martinbreidenbach — Thu, 13 Feb 2014 21:12:03 GMT

Did you press ctrl-c and wipe the disks ?

I think that's mentioned somewhere in the installation PDF.

Since I usually replace the virtual 1GB disks with bigger ones I do that anyway.

Is the simulator still supported for either vmware player or native windows?

WSANDERSATFLEXERA — Thu, 13 Feb 2014 21:25:15 GMT

Error is "WARNING: There do not appear to be any disks attached to the system. No root volume found."

Re: Is the simulator still supported for either vmware player or native windows?

martinbreidenbach — Fri, 14 Feb 2014 05:56:04 GMT

Unzip the tarball (I used 7zip but)

Open VMX file with VMware player

start the VM

click into console window

when 'press ctl-c' message appears press ctrl-c

in menu select 4 to wipe disks

after disk wipe is finished you should have a usable simulator. That procedure is described in the installation PDF. I've done this several times in the past for different versions of the simulator (using VMware Workstation 9/10 or ESXi 5.1 where an additional step to convert the unsupported disk format is needed).

I never had to do any changes to the VMX file (well if I convert the split VMDK data file which contains the disk images into one big file I hve to tell the system to use that one but that's just remove hard drive 4 and add preexisting file as hard drive 4 type ide)

Which version of the simulator are you trying to use ? whats the file name (there are 4 files for 7m/cm and VMware Workstation/ESXi)? Are you running Linux or Windows ? You are running Player 6 on Windows 7?