Questions about wanting to run Win7 WMC in VM under Win10

Finally completed my Phase 1 build-out of Win10 on my dual-boot ASUS Z170-Deluxe machine (32GB DDR4-2400 RAM, Intel i7-6700 CPU), so I can now boot to either Win7 Pro or Win10 Pro via Boot Manager. Because of GPT issues previously mentioned, I was forced to install Win10 to my 1TB GPT Samsung 850 Pro SATA3 SSD, whereas Win7 is on my 512GB MBR Samsung 960 Pro NVMe SSD. The machine also has a 6TB SATA3 WD Black HDD. This Phase 1 plateau represents Win10 with all of my standard customizations applied and all 3rd-party products installed. Zero VM. Macrium system image taken, so I can always go back to this point if I mess up the whole VM project.

As mentioned previously, I decided to go with VMWare Workstation Player (free), and so far my concerns about its being perhaps addressed to users who have more pre-training in VM installation and use seems well founded. I've had problems finding documentation (specifically for me, who is an absolute "rookie" when it comes to using VM under Windows), and when I have found the documentation I've had trouble comprehending what it says, or dealing with the extensive link->link->link for a seemingly never-ending chain of related documents, never really getting THE answer I'm looking for.

Anyway, I've just now installed VMWare and attempted to create my first VM, a Win7 Pro machine using the Win7 Pro ISO installer file I have. This is the original MS ISO, so it doesn't have USB 3.0 or NVMe drivers in it. I've used it to create my own updated bootable USB that does have the additional USB 3.0 and NVMe drivers in it, but the original ISO does not have it. So of course I was concerned as to whether or not this would be directly usable to build the VM if I wanted to support USB 3.0 and NVMe.

Nevertheless, I started (blindly, hoping my intuitive choices would suffice since I was having a tough time getting basic but adequate install instructions from the documentation), and made some simple reasonable changes to machine hardware configuration on the new VM. For example, I went to 4 cores, and 8GB of memory. I also checked Intel VT-x/EPT as my virtualization engine, and I requested USB 3.0 compatibility. This latter choice popped up a link to the required Intel USB 3.0 driver download page, but provided zero information as to how I'm supposed to then make those drivers available for my VM. Do I do it before creating the machine (i.e. update the ISO), or can I just install the drivers after the VM gets created, as I would normally do for any needed but missing device driver? In the case of real USB 3.0 and Skylake hardware, you can't do a real Win7 install without updated Win7 install media that included the USB 3.0 driver. But with this VM install, can it be deferred? I will find out I'm sure but if someone could just answer this question I would appreciate it.

The machine seemed to get built almost too quickly to have completed, so maybe it's just getting started before it ran into the next issue when perhaps trying to "Play virtual machine", which maybe is what needs to get started in order to then do the real Win7 install. I don't know, because I really have no idea what's going on at this moment. I do now have one entry for "Windows 7 x64" in my VM list, but it won't actually start.



Anyway, the issue which is currently preventing the VM from launching is an error message, relating to Windows Defender Credential Guard being incompatible. Again, this is cryptic to me, since I'm not really explicitly using Windows Defender in my Win10 host. I'm using Bitdefender as my anti-virus. Or, is this a problem inside the Win7 VM, which doesn't contain a default anti-virus product as delivered from MS on the retail installer.

Nevertheless, the following error message appeared, preventing me from going any further. I have looked at the linked answer document provided in the message, but it's incomprehensible to me. There's a link in this document stating there is a way to disable this functionality using "Windows Defender Credential Guard hardware readiness tool", but no usable understandable instructions on how to actually run it or use it.

So I no idea how to actually easily and simply and directly disable this Credential Guard which appears to be blocking my new VM from running. The manual instructions are even more overwhelming.

If someone can please explain to me what the following message is trying to communicate, and then what I need to do to overcome it and move forward, this rank beginner would much appreciate the help.

You were absolutely correct. In planning for this VM project I hadn't yet decided on which software product I was going to use. Thinking I probably would go with the free Hyper-V first (before knowing that VMWare Workstation Player was also free for personal use) I had enabled that feature. I didn't know that enabling Hyper-V even though it was not being used was incompatible with wanting to run VMWare.

So indeed that was the explanation for my problem, and this cryptic error message whose text words conveyed nothing at all meaningful in pointing me in the direction of problem solution was kind of worthless. Thankfully you understood the likely cause, which was 100% right.

Instead of using BCDEDIT to turn off autolaunch, I decided to just remove the Hyper-V feature completely. So I just un-checked it (same as I'd just checked it originally) and re-booted. And as you predicted, VMWare was now able to start my Win7 VM.

And, as I suspected would probably happen, the install of Win7 from my ISO began immediately. It is now almost finished, and is at "preparing desktop". Hopefully I will soon have a Win7 VM, and I probably will need to install the USB 3.0 and NVMe drivers which no doubt are still missing (since they weren't in my retail installer ISO). And I'll be off and running.

Many thanks for that tip, and problem resolution.

Phase 2 of this Win7 VM project now complete. I need some new assistance.

I've run all the Windows Updates needed to get my Win7 VM up to current. I've also installed all of the fundamental vendor software products I must have in my Win7 worlds, and have not installed all of the rest of the "bells and whistles" software products I have installed on my genuine "production Win7 machines". My goal was to get a Win7 VM sufficient for me to experiment with Windows Media Center running in it, and hopefully able to access both my Hauppauge Quad-4 and Ceton InifiniTV 6 tuner cards.

The one virtual disk associated with my Win7 VM is C. No other local drives appeared in Windows Explorer, and no other network machines appeared either. But the local drives of the host machine were available via Network, since the host machine appeared in Network. So I expanded the host machine, and then "mapped network drives" for all of the drives D, E, F, etc. that I wanted access to in the Win7 VM... same as if they had just been visible as true local drives. Perfectly acceptable workaround to use "mapped network drives", and I now have convenient drive-letter full access within Win7 VM to (a) virtual C for Win7 VM, (b) local C from Win10 host, (c) local C from dual-boot Win7 on this same physical machine, and (d) all other local partitions on the real SSD and HDD drives in this physical machine.

I am fully prepared for the fact that PlayReady and DRM in Win7 WMC will prevent me from playing back previously recorded copy-protected content. But presumably I should be able to play previously recorded copy-freely content without any problem. And if I ever get new recordings to work using the Ceton TV tuner card, I should clearly be able to play those recordings back using WMC in Win7 VM. That of course is the objective of this project.

And in fact, I have so far achieved what I will call REMARKABLE SUCCESS, given that I'm only one day into this project!! In fact WMC set itself up for use perfectly, although I have not yet run the TV Signal setup process for the two TV tuner cards. But as far as configuring Media Libraries (i.e. \Recorded TV, excluding Music, Pictures, and Videos), that part works just fine because WMC itself works just fine in Win7 VM.

I was unable to "see" the two TV tuner cards in Win7 VM, but that's not unexpected since I hadn't installed the Win10 drivers for these two TV tuner cards. I tried installing the two Win7 drivers I'm currently using in real Win7 inside of the Win7 VM, but neither worked because the two PCIe cards themselves are not visible in Device Manager of Win7 VM. This is the main new problem I need to resolve, if possible.

Furthermore, neither of these two Win7 drivers are directly installable in native Win10. I thought maybe if I could get the two PCIe cards to be visible and installed with drivers in Win10 that this might perhaps automatically then make the two cards "visible" in Win7 VM. So I spent some time pursuing this.

Turns out Hauppauge has a new version 8.5 of its Win-TV software product supporting its TV tuner cards, and this version 8.5 runs in Win10 and includes drivers for the Quad-4 card that are for Win10. I hadn't been using Win-TV (since I'd been using Windows Media Center with the Hauppauge Quad-4 OTA/ATSC TV tuner card), but the Win10 driver for the Quad-4 by itself is available for download from Hauppauge.

So I downloaded the latest Win10 driver that is part of the Win-TV 8.5 product, and also paid $9.95 to purchase an "activation code" so that I can install and run the Win-TV 8.5 product itself "native" in Win10, just so that I can have that functionality available.

I also installed the downloaded Win10 Hauppauge driver piece from the Win-TV 8.5 product into Win10, and sure enough it installed perfectly! Shows up properly in Win10 Device Manager, but still not in Win7 VM Device Manager. More on this later. I assume that on Monday Hauppauge will email me the activation code for the Win-TV 8.5 that I just purchased, and I will be able to install it and confirm that I can at least (worst case) view/record OTA/ATSC content using Win-TV in Win10. I don't know what they do for Electronic Program Guide, but I will do a little playing around with it after I get my activation code. I already have an EPG subscription to Schedules Direct, which feeds 3rd-party EPG123 which supports WMC (relacing Rovi from MS, which is crap), so maybe this same EPG source will support Win-TV. We shall address all of this separately and later, as getting WMC to run in Win7 VM is the primary goal here.

With the Win10 driver for the Hauppauge card now successfully installed, I then resumed my pursuit of seeing about driver support for the Ceton card in native Win10. Turns out the latest Win7 driver is only installable in Win7, and will not install in Win10. And since the card itself is not vislble in Win7 VM Device Manager, it certainly won't install there either.

However research revealed a very productive Ceton forum thread that claimed the Win8 version of the Ceton driver worked perfectly in Win10, insofar as it at least installed correctly!! Sure, there's no WMC in Win10 (as there still was in Win8) but at least the Win8 driver is usable on Win10 as well. And sure enough, when I ran the newly downloaded Win8 driver it absolutely installed perfectly in Win10!!

Not only did it install perfectly in Win10, but it actually PERFORMS PERFECTLY (outside of WMC) using its own Diagnostics Utility and "manual tuning" controls. The Ceton Diagnostic Utility (installed along with the driver) works perfectly in Win10, and of course recognizes that WMC is not available and none of the WMC services are running (which would be a real problem, of course, if this was Win7 or Win8, but not in Win10). But all the other aspects of the diagnostic examination of the hardware and driver check out 100% perfect, including the 100% functioning super-critical SDV driver that supports the Motorola Tuning Adapter (connected by USB to the physcial machine).

So I was able to confirm that the Ceton card is now supported by a seemingly 100% working driver in Win10. And when I performed a "manual tuner test" talking to the card's user-interface through Firefox via its 192.168.200.1 IP address, sure enough I was able to successfully tune to both standard cable channels, premium cable channels, and SDV cable channels (handled through the Motorola Tuning Adapter). Remarkable!!!


So that brings me to the end of this very long first day of swimming in the VMWare Workstation Player pool with my new Win7 VM. Quite successful, but two major issues that now need to be resolved in order for me to move on productively. And I have a third issue that at the moment is not crucial to get resolved, but I would like to learn more about how if at all it might get resolved.

(1) I have an eHome USB IR Receiver and matching remote. This is for control of WMC through a standard IR-enabled handheld WMC remote. This device showed up in the Win7 VM list of "removable devices", as initially connected to the host machine but available for re-connection to the Win7 VM machine if I clicked on it.



So I clicked on it, and the device was moved from Win10 to Win7 VM, and I heard the sound of "new removable USB hardware detected" and saw drivers getting installed. And at the end it all seemed successful, and apparently was now supposedly usable in Win7 VM to control WMC.

However it didn't actually work. When pushing keys on the remote I could see the red light flashing correspondingly on the IR receiver, but functionally nothing in WMC was responding. Seems like this wasn't really working as it should.

I need to get this resolved.



(2) As I stated earlier, using the latest Win-TV 8.5 driver for the Hauppauge Quad-4 card, the card is now properly installed in native Win10 Device Manager. And using the Win8 version of the driver for the Ceton InfiniTV6 card it also now gets properly installed in native Win10 Device manager and all aspects of it function diagnostically perfectly, including all tuning of basic, premium, and SDV channels.

And yet, there is no mention of these two PCIe cards in Win7 VM Device Manager, and there must be if WMC is going to be able to use them. This is a MAJOR deal-breaker issue unless I can resolve it.





(3) My nVidia GTX 1050ti graphics card is showing up in Win7 VM Device Manager as a "VMWare SVGA 3D" card. It is not possible to install the nVidia retail graphics driver for the 1050ti, since this hardware is not present.

What are the capabilities of this VMWare-supported implementation of this graphics card? Will I be able to go through it to play copy-protected content on a local monitor, which requires HDCP functionality to be enabled?


So, there does not appear to be any way to "Add PCIe cards to a VM session" using "edit", at least with VMWare Workstation Player (free). Is there such an option for the non-free paid version? Or maybe only with the Pro version (which is even more expensive)? I MUST get these two PCIe TV tuner cards visible in Win7 VM Device Manager and with usable driver within Win7 VM Device Manager, or at least through some VMWare-supported virtualization using the native Win10 drivers that are actually now completely installed in Win10 Device Manager for these cards.

And I'd like to get the USB IR Receiver and WMC remote working within Win7 VM.

And I'd like to know what I can expect as far as limitations on playing copy-protected content on a local monitor (via HCMI cable) which requires HDCP support, when going through the so-called VMWare SVGA 3D graphics display adapter. Is this already some correctly usable virtualization of the 1050ti and related HDCP, so that I have nothing to worry about? Or does nobody know just yet and I'm about to find out?


All in all, I'm very very satisfied with the results so far, after Day #2 of the project, representing my very first real contact with using VM.

And I'm not averse to paying for an upgraded "premium" VM software product, if that's the only way to get enhanced ability to manually add PCIe card support (i.e. allowing any PCIe card installed in host Win10 Device Manager to be "passed-through" and also usable inside the Win7 VM guest. Is this a feature that is available with some other VM engine product?

- - - Updated - - -

Still have no direct "local" way of getting to the two PCIe TV tuner cards which are now both properly installed in Win10 host Device Manager but are still "invisible" to Win7 VM guest Device Manager. Failing any other VM software product that might be able to pass-through these PCIe cards from host to the VM, this goal seems to have hit a dead end.

Another approach I discovered that might possibly work would be based on "network bridging", since the Ceton TV tuner card supports tuner sharing. Also, the Ceton card itself is visible from within a browser running in Win7 VM as 192.168.200.1 so you'd think it could be used as a shared network tuner. And this had been anticipated by Ceton, and is supported by their drivers.

Once again... false hope. Turns out this "network shared tuner" technology (aka "network bridging") is only available in the Win7 version of the driver. So you can share 1-6 tuners on one Ceton PCIe card hosted by one Win7 HTPC, with other client Win7 HTPCs on the LAN. Unfortunately this feature was NOT implemented for WMC running on Win8, and thus is not supported by the Win8 driver which is the one I'd successfully installed into Win10.

Furthermore, the "shared network tuner" implementation requires that you get into the WMC user interface on the HTPC hosting the Ceton 1-6 tuner card, in order to "carve out" those tuners which will be available for sharing and which other tuners will be reserved for use by the local host machine. This WMC user interface for tuner sharing to the driver which supports tuner sharing is, of course, only possible on a machine where WMC exists at all. And of course WMC doesn't exist in Win10 so there would be no actual way to configure the tuner sharing.

Bottom line: "network bridging", to make the Ceton tuners available via 192.168.200.1 (visible both on the host Win10 machine as well as in the Win7 VM guest) is similarly not possible.


Final answer: I've put in a bid (on eBay Canada) to buy a Ceton ETH external 6-tuner network device. This would replace my internal PCIe 6-tuner card, and would thus be available on my normal 192.168.1.x LAN and thus fully visible to Win7 VM. This overcomes the fact that the locally installed PCIe cards are visible to Win7 VM through 192.168.200.1, but unfortunately the tuner sharing user interface and corresponding driver support is unavailable in a Win10 environment.

So I believe this external Ceton ETH tuner box is my true genuine solution., for my cable channels including basic, premium, and SDV-provided via Motorola Digital Tuning Adapter. It also supports SDV and the Motorola Digital Tuning Adapter, but connected directly to the ETH tuner box instead of to my PC as it current is (when used with the internal PCIe tuner card and driver). I will be able to prove all this out next week, when hopefully I will win the eBay auction and get it in my hands.

Now this does NOT solve my other desire, which is to provide support for my Hauppauge Quad-4 OTA/ATSC card in a Win10 environment. The PCIe card is also "invisible" to Win7 VM, so I can't use it in WMC in Win7 VM. However the official Win-TV 8.5 software from Hauppauge actually does run in Win10 native!

So although I'd obviously prefer to have one single WMC interface handling both Ceton and Hauppauge cards, if I have to support only the new external Ceton ETH tuners with WMC in Win7VM, and also support the Hauppauge Quad-4 tuners through Win-TV 8.5 running in Win10 native, well at least I still would say I have a genuine Win10 solution for my all-around TV DVR needs, both cable (including copy-protected content) as well as OTA/ATSC.

The goal is to plan for the demise of Win7 next January, and replace my Win7 HTPC with equivalent functionality running on Win10. And this "hybrid" approach does seem to do that. It seems only reasonable that at least "something" would have to change from how it all works in Win7, but if I can still retain 100% of my viewing/recording/playback needs, for basic cable, premium cable, SDV cable, and OTA/ATSC, then that's a complete solution... even if I have to use Win-TV in Win10 along with WMC in Win7 VM.

More to follow next week. In the meantime, I can at least prove that I can connect a WMC extender to WMC in Win7 VM, even if I can only play copy-freely content right now. If I can do that, then I'm sure I will be able to distribute copy-protected content to extenders when I regain the ability to record copy-protected content through the Ceton ETH tuners managed by WMC in Win7 VM.

Although I would have liked to retain the ability to view WMC copy-protected content played on a local HTPC-compliant monitor through my nVidia GTX 1050ti graphics card, if that turns out to be the one loss in the transition from Win7 to Win10, I can live with it. I don't think VMWare and its graphics support will handle that properly, so that I may be limited to viewing copy-protected content only through a WMC extender. But I can live with that, given everything else that WILL still work as it does now or very much like it.

Been away for a bit, fighting with a bug in Win10 Macrium Reflect regarding improper construction of WinPE (for their "Rescue" feature) when running on my Z170 machine, being unable to see any USB devices connected through ports managed by the Asmedia 3.1 USB Controller driver. Turns out the "compatible" USB 3.0 support in WinPE is supposed to support the Asmedia controller, but apparently not. And attemtping to manually add the Asmedia USB driver to the base WinPE also fails.

Turns out it the exact same "Rescue" construction process using the Win7 version of Macrium Reflect and the exact same WinPE base, it works perfectly. Devices connected through ports managed by the Asmedia USB are recognized perfectly using this "Rescue" environment.

Anyway, I've got a ticket open with Macrium on this. In the meantime I've re-configured by USB device cabling so that the crucial USB mouse, USB keyboard, and USB external backup drive now go through ports managed by the Intel USB 3.0/2.0 controller on the Z170 board.


With this other crisis out of the way I'm now getting back to this WMC under Win7 VM project.

Tonight the eBay auction ends for the Ceton ETH network tuner (I intend to bid a BIG BUNDLE, to guarantee I get it... because I'm really willing to get it at any price, since it seems to be the only one for sale on Planet Earth). So hopefully that will happen, and before too long I will have it in my hands and can see if it can be used inside of Win7 VM.

But in the meantime, I today tried to install the Win-TV 8.5 product from Hauppauge, under the theory (a) it works on Win10, and (b) it supports my Win-TV QuadHD card. I've already installed the 8.5 driver by itself, and that went fine. But when I tried to install Win-TV itself it locked up Windows frozen, and I had to reboot. I tried this three times, and it failed the same way all three times.

Doesn't look good. Perhaps it's not compatible with 1809. Or maybe there's some other explanation, or something I don't know. I've written an email to them asking for advice, so I should know tomorrow what the story really is.

Anyway, at least I'm now at a stable point in the project. Win10 is fully installed in a dual-boot environment with Win7 which still can be used as an HTPC with Ceton and Hauppauge PCIe TV tuner cards, if this whole Win7 VM project fails. VMWare Workstation Player is installed, and is obviously working fine.


I'll post further progress (or not) as it occurs.

Kari said:

You are welcome

I have a question related to VMWare (not WMC), that I have posted in the VMWare forum (Workstation Player sub-forum) and which has so far gotten 44 views but 0 replies. So my question remains unanswered. As you are clearly an experienced user of VMWare, I wonder if you might be able to answer my question (either here or over in the VMWare forum thread itself).

Specifically I just yesterday accepted the software's offer to upgrade from my initially installed Workstation Player 15.0.4 to the latest 15.1.0. That went fine, and there are no problems either with Workstation Player itself or with my Win7 VM running inside of it.

However the Win7 system tray icon for VMWare Tools (inside the Win7 VM) has a yellow exclamation mark on it. And when I hover the mouse over the icon the flyout text "VMWare Tools can be updated" appears. This suggests to me that there may be an updated version of VMWare Tools available that matches the 15.1.0 update to Workstation Player, newer than the 10.3.5 version of VMWare Tools that I originally installed in my Win7 VM along with 15.0.4 of Workstation Player itself.

However I find the whole VMWare site very unfriendly and inscrutable, and difficult to navigate or find "answers" to or help locating things such as simple downloads. So, for example, although I obviously must have somehow discovered how to download VMWare Tools 10.3.5 a few weeks back, I can no longer seem to find that download link. Hence I can't figure out if there is an updated version I should download and install, or what.

I've tried simply uninstalling VMWare Tools 10.3.5 and then re-booting Win7 VM and then re-installing the very same 10.3.5 installer file. Not entirely surprisingly I still have the yellow exclamation mark over the icon, and no clue how it is to be resolved.

If you can provide some guidance to me in this matter I'd be much appreciative. Just point me to some page, or provide a URL link to where I can figure out for myself how to proceed from there and either get the answer to what is really meant by this "VMWare Tools can be updated" message, or how to correct whatever might currently be wrong with my environment is responsible for this message.

Many thanks in advance, if you can just give me a small push in the right direction so that I can learn for myself what this is all about.

Hi folks

@DSperber
@Kari

I'm testing W7 X-64 Ultimate as a VM on both W10 1903 (latest release) as a Host and also on a Linux Host.

This test is on the Windows Host on an HP laptop.

The last Windows updates I applied via W7 control panel ==> windows updates were in the middle of 2017 so if you have any outstanding updates on W7 apply them first.

Now mine just works fine when I say update VMware tools from the menu (WKS 15.1.0) - however try uninstalling VMware tools completely on the VM and then after re-boot install again from scratch.

Make sure also that your HOST system has all the drivers and updates applied as any problems with HOST hardware may cause the "para-virtualized" VM hardware to function incorrectly or not at all.

Downloading about 1GB of updates - and updating Office (have Office pro 2016 on this VM)




will test VMWare tools after the main windows update

Note -- usually you can also from the menu (the VM menu) choose update VMware tools and you should see a device "D" appear within your VM with options what do you want to do with this device simply - run the .exe file.

You don't need to download anything - this is all from within the VMWare software itself.

Off to Pub for a beer with a friend and thirsty dog !!! post back later.

Note you can run same VM on multiple Hosts -- just check the I MOVED it box not I COPIED it when booting the VM for the first time on a different HOST or a different HDD/SSD or you might lose activation due to different UUID being generated = hence different machine as far as Windows activation thinks.

Cheers
jimbo