In an era of all things moving towards 64-bit, I learn today that VMware v3.5 has either stopped supporting or completely forgotten about 64-bit support for its Virtual Infrastructure Client. Egad, I hope this is merely a mistake. This means that if your desktop is 64-bit, then you won't be able to manage your virtual machines once you upgrade your ESX and Virtual Infrastructure environment to v3.5.

What makes this all that much more odd is the ability for Windows to run 32-bit apps in Windows-On-Windows mode. Thus, the VIC could still run as a 32-bit installation, but in the WOW32 subsystem. So this is really starting to sound like a big "whoops!"

Thankfully some enterprising individuals have already figured out a way to hack the VIC installation routine so that it will install to 64-bit systems anyway. They also figured out a way to force the VIC to run in 32-bit emulation mode -- something VMware should have done themselves.

Here's the link to the fix. Its complicated and involves downloading ORCA and the .NET SDK, but it works. Sheesh.