GNS3 VM and VMware Workstation 12 Player: Could not find the default VM directory

While setting up the new GNS3 1.4 Virtual Machine with VMware Workstation 12 Player, I ran into an interesting error that was preventing me from completing the installation.

gns3-vm01Thankfully the fix is fairly straight forward and requires that we edit the VMware Workstation preferences file.

  • Open preferences.ini in your text editor of choice
    • %Appdata%\VMware\preferences.ini
  • Add or edit the following line, changing the path to where your virtual machines are stored
    • prefvmx.defaultVMPath = "C:\Path\To\My\VMs"
  • And that’s it. Save the ini and restart the GNS3 Setup Wizard.

gns3-vm02gns3-vm03Credit to the VMware support forums: https://communities.vmware.com/thread/245114?start=0&tstart=0