If you’re having issues with VMware Workstation bridged networking  running on Windows, I may have a solution for you.

As you may know, I use VMware Workstation for lab stuff and what not.  Not having bridged mode is kind of a big deal for me to say the least.

I recently installed the Windows 10 Creators Update on my VM, and it blew up a few things, including VMware Workstation bridged networking functionality.  My already existing bridged network stopped working.  NAT would work fine though.  I removed the bridged network and tried to create a new one, and got the following error:

Cannot change network to bridged: There are no un-bridged host network adapters.

Check if the BMware Bridge Protocol Service Is Bound To Your NIC

I went poking around on my network adapters and noticed the VMware services were missing from the bindings.  You should see the highlighted VMware Bridge Protocol.  If you don’t, click Install, select VMware as the vendor, and select the bridge protocol.

Restore Virtual Network Editor Defaults

Once I added the VMware Bridge Protocol service, I could add a bridged network again.  However, it still didn’t work, so I hit the reset Restore Defaults button under Virtual Network Editor.  You should document any customizations you’ve done within your Virtual Network Editor prior to doing this.

Once completed, I set my virtual machines to the default bridged network.  They connected to the network like a champ! That fixed my issues with VMware Workstation bridged networking, and my lab is functioning once again!