chrisbray.co.uk

I've just tried to setup VMWare Server on the new works laptop I'm gonna be using on an impending trip to the USA. Everything seemed to go well in the installation process but every time I tried to connect using the VMWare Console I got an error message stating "Error writing to vmware-authd socket. error 10013" or occasionally "Failed to do SSL handshake"

Not helpful I'm sure you'll agree!

Well, after a bit of googling and a lot of swearing I came across the following two forum posts (One post on the VMWare forum, and one on the McAfee forum) from people trying to use VMWare server in conjunction with McAfee SecurityCenter.

It turns out that this spangly new Dell Inspiron laptop came pre installed with McAfee SecurityCenter, which has a child "McAfee Redirector" process, that does some stuff with ports on your computer, even after you've disabled the firewall!

Cheers guys...

Anyways, you apply this at your own risk, don't bame me if your computer catches fire or evil crackers take control of your computer after you implement this but here's a fix that worked for me.

If you create a .reg file with the following contents (or download it from here), merge it into the registry and restart, you're sorted. This IS disabling part of McAfee SecurityCenter so if you don't know what this is talking about with ports and the like this may not be for you...

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\McAfee\Redirector\Ports]

"902"="Ignore"
"8222"="Ignore"
"8333"="Ignore"
"912"="Ignore" 

Let me know if it works/doesn't work for you :)