User Name and Password Access Denied or Failed When Running VMWare Server 2.0 in Windows Vista

The free virtualization software, VMWare Server 2.0 can be installed on Windows Vista as host operating system. After installing, user can double click on “VMWare Server Home Page” shortcut icon on desktop or in Start Menu to access VMWare Server Web Console user interface in a web browser. Users will then require to enter a Windows user name and password to login to VMWare Server web UI.

However, when attempting to login with a Windows Vista user account with administrative privileges which has been assigned a password, including the built-in default Administrator user account, the login will fail with the following error message:

Access denied

If user uses any other invalid credentials to try to log in to VMWare Server web console homepage, or those user account without password, of course, the result will still be user cannot log on to VMWare Infrastructure web management interface with the error message:

Login failed due to a bad username or password

The problem related to cannot log in to VMWare Server Console homepage, no matter via WMI WebAccess or WebUI is highly possible caused by security feature in Windows Vista, which is User Account Control.

There are a few workarounds and resolutions that users can try in order to solve the issue of unable to login to VMWare Server Home Page.

1. Try to run Internet Explorer 7 with administrator’s rights by right click on IE7 shortcut or icon, and then select “Run as Administrator”. Then login with an user account with administrator’s privileges.
2. If running IE7 with elevated privileges doesn’t work to solve the VMWare Server 2.0 login problem, try to use the default built-in Administrator account. The Administrator account which equivalent to root user in Unix/Linux is disabled by default, and can be turned on by running following command in elevated command prompt:

   net user administrator password /active:yes

   Replace password with an actual password you want to assign to Administrator account. Then, try to open IE7 as Administrator and login with the Administrator user account.

3. If everything fails to resolve the unable to login issue, disable UAC of Windows Vista. Disabling UAC will likely to enable you to login with any administrative account, not just the Administrator account.