My windows XP home running in vmware cant connect to the interenet.  I found a tutorial that shows that under the "virtual Machine" menu at the bottom there are settings for CD/DVD,FLOPPY,HARD DISK,NETWORK,SOUND,USB.  However when I open my "virtual machine "window the "NETWORK" setting does not show.  What is missing and how do I fix that?

VMware Fusion supports several different configurations for how the virtual machine get's an IP address. For example the virtual machine can have an IP address, independent of that of OS X. However the setup I've always used is for the virtual machine to share the OS X IP address. VMware calls this NAT. This has to be setup before the virtual machine is started. (And if the virtual machine has been started before, then it needs to be shutdown, not suspended.)

So if it's of any help, here's my setup:

• I'm running OS X 10.6.2 on a MBP
• I launch VMware Fusion 3.0.1
• But before I start up a virtual machine for the first time, I open up the 'Virtual Machine Library' window, highlight the virtual machine, and press Command-E. (Or right-click and select Settings...)
• From there I get to the Network settings, viz: Settings... > Network > Connected (ensure checkbox is checked) > Share the Mac's Network Connection (NAT)
• The key part here is that the virtual machine should not be running yet, until you made these settings.
• Then I start up the virtual machine. (On subsequent start ups of the virtual machine, I can skip the above steps - it remembers I'm using NAT.)

I use XP as my virtual machine, and if OS X is on the internet, then with the above settings, so is the XP virtual machine.

PS. I also find the VMware Fusion support forum a good resource:  http://communities.vmware.com/community/vmtn/desktop/fusion