VMWare under Windows 7 and later create 2 network drivers — one for bridged networking and one for NAT. Windows can’t determine the workgroup state of these adapters, and refers to them as “unidentified network” when you hover over the network icon. There’s a simple registry hack to fix this:

1. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.
2. Click the follwoing subkey:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetControlClass{4D36E972-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}
3. Browse through the 00xx subkeys until you find the REG_SZ VMNet subkey with a value of either “DosDevicesVMnet8” or “DosDevicesVMnet1” (default values)
4. On the Edit menu, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.
5. Type *NdisDeviceType, and then press Enter.
6. On the Edit menu, click Modify.
7. Type 1, and then click OK.
8. Exit Registry Editor. 9 Disable & re-enable the VMWare NICs
9. Log-out of your Windows account and log back in.
10. Done.