A quick tip for folks who have used Microsoft Virtual Server/Virtual PC to work with server images, especially in development and staging environments. Although Microsoft’s Hyper-V offers significant improvements over Virtual Server, there’s a trick or two to remember when migrating to the newer technology.
If you remember back to your first virtual server image, you may recall that you had to hunt around for an ISO image to install Virtual Machine VPC) Additions. This adds additional Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) support to the guest operating system that allows for the host system to direct orderly shutdown, and allows mouse control to flow seamlessly between guest and host windows.
Hyper-V provides a simpler way to add its own support to new virtual servers from its Virtual Machine Connection. You can use the menu option to Insert Integration Services Setup Disk. However, this installation will complain if you copied the hard disk and configuration data over from the older Virtual Server environment. Specifically, it won’t install until the Virtual Machine Additions are uninstalled. But Hyper-V then won’t let you uninstall the older software.
The workaround is to shutdown the new Hyper-V installation and mount the system virtual hard drive (VHD) under Virtual PC or Virtual Server 2005. (Either copy or share the VHD file!) This will allow you to remove the Virtual Machine Additions from the VHD image. Close down Virtual PC and then restart or recopy the VHD back to the Hyper-V environment. You should now be able to install the new Integration Services from the Hyper-V console. Good luck!
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