At work, I’m on the pilot for one of the new features in Windows 7, DirectAccess. You know how Outlook just magically works, whether you’re connecting inside your LAN or outside it, even though they use different servers/protocols/whatever? Imagine that, only with every app – it’s totally transparent VPN, and except for a few apps that can’t grok IPv6, it works great.

I’m a Smartcard reader, and I’m about to throw some salt in your game

One of the caveats at least at Microsoft is, you have to use a Smartcard reader, like the one pictured above. Unfortunately for me, these appear to be some kind of broken under VMWare Fusion 2.0; trying the advice in the thread unfortunately got me nowhere.

Here’s the workaround, though it’s super-annoying because it basically makes suspending the VM worthless.

1. Power off the VM completely
2. Plug in the Smartcard reader, with the card inserted
3. Hit the Power button on the VM
4. Before the machine boots completely, click on the USB icon at the bottom right, and select the “Connect Omnicard USB Reader” menu item that pops up

The Smartcard reader will appear to be dead until right before LogonUI spins up (i.e. right when you see the blue “underwater” screen where you type in your Smartcard PIN). It should work from then on, as long as you never detach the reader.

Like I said, super annoying; if anyone’s got any better ideas, I’m definitely willing to hear them; I suspect this has something to do with the new Smartcard support that VMWare added in their Workstation product – maybe there’s a way to disable this via a VMX config option?