Shared Folders Use UNC Path

Products

• VMware Desktop Hypervisor

Issue/Introduction

How do my shared folders appear inside my Windows guest operating system?

Environment

VMware Workstation 4.x (Windows)
VMware Workstation 4.x (Linux)

Resolution

In VMware Workstation 4, version 4.0, shared folders in a Windows virtual machine appear under a drive letter in the virtual machine. The default drive letter is V.

In VMware Workstation 4, version 4.0.1, shared folders in a Windows virtual machine appear in My Network Places (Network Neighborhood in a Windows NT virtual machine) under VMware Shared Folders. For example, if you specify the name Test files for one of your shared folders, you can navigate to it by opening My Network Places>VMware Shared Folders>.host>Shared Folders>Test files.

You can also go directly to the folder using the UNC path \\.host\Shared Folders\Test files.

You can map a shared folder to a drive letter just as you would with a network share.

Note: To see shared folders displayed in this way, you must update VMware Tools in the virtual machine to the current version. If your guest operating system has the version of VMware Tools that shipped with VMware Workstation 4.0, shared folders appear as folders on a designated drive letter.

Note: It you create a virtual machine and configure it for shared folders under Workstation version 4.0, then update to version 4.0.1 and update VMware Tools in the guest operating system, your shared folders are automatically mapped to the same drive letter you were using before.

For more details on using shared folders, see http://www.vmware.com/support/ws45/doc/running_sharefold_ws.html.