Enable Shared Folders in Virtual Machines in VMware Workstation 6.5

One of the biggest problems that administrators face after creating virtual machines in VMware workstation is how to copy data files from host machine to the guest machine. Although as soon as VMware Tools are installed on the guest operating systems VMware workstation allows users to drag and drop files from physical computers to virtual machines. In many cases though administrators may want to access a specific folder on the physical machine from right inside the virtual computer. When this is the case administrators can either type Universal Naming Convention or UNC (\) path to the target folder or they can share and map the folder on the host machine as a network drive inside the virtual machine. However the best and most convenient solution for this problem is that administrators can enable Shared Folders feature which is provided by VMware workstation. This feature is virtual machine specific that is administrators need to enable Shared Folders for every virtual machine individually. The benefit of enabling Shared Folders is that administrators need not to share any folder on the host machine in order to access it from the virtual machine. As an administrator you can enable Shared Folders for a virtual machine by following the steps given below:

1. Open VMware workstation console window and from the right pane right click on the tab of the virtual machine on which you want to enable Shared Folders.

2. From the appeared menu click on Settings and from the opened box go to Options tab.

3. Then from the left pane click on Shared Folders and from the right pane choose Always enabled radio button.

4. Check Map as it will drive in Windows guests checkbox and click on Add button to browse and locate the folder on the host machine that you want to share.

   

5. Once done click on Ok button to accept and confirm the changes.