VMware Player and Win 8/8.1

Having an unused Win 8 key I thought I would upgrade an older system in a VM using only a product key, per Microsoft. Starting with Vista in VMware it upgraded to 8 without a hitch, but that's as far as I can get. The upgrade to 8.1 fails every time and it reverts to 8 - a fairly common problem it seems. So I tried the same thing starting with XP, and although that too upgrades smoothly Win 8 has no network connections. (Both Bridged mode and NAT normally work perfectly in VMware but it's telling me to install a network adapter even though one is showing and is saying 'Connected'.).

This is very frustrating. Does anyone have any suggestions?

 

Earthling...

Was able to locate this:

http://thoughtsofanidlemind.com/2013/09/13/windows-8-1-an-easy-upgrade-except-for-vmware/

Maybe you can make sense of downloading VMware Workstation 10.0 before updating to Win 8.1...:confused

 

Thanks AtlBo, that at least confirms that there can be issues with VMware and 8.1, just as I have found. Workstation is an expensive, professional product but home users can download a cut-down version for free called VMware Player and that's what I use and have done so for years. This is the first time I've had any issues at all with it. Hopefully the next release will fix whatever is causing these problems.

 

Ah. OK, thanks for the info Earthling...