If you don't want to read the full story and want to skip to the
problem, just skip down below my markings.


I"m trying to evaluate my company's options for upgrading their
computers from XP/2k3server to Vista/2k8 server. In perticular, I"m
interested in running the core server to support some of our basic
server needs with increased reliability and adding virtualization +
clustering to provide failover support with hardware efficiency.

Before starting this evaluation, I had no copies of Vista running in
our company so I installed an evaluation copy of Vista Business on a
VirtualPC2007 build 6.0.156.0. The only problem I"ve run into with my
vista installation and joining it to my company domain is that my
domain has a policy to redirect the desktop to our 2k3 server and
enable offline files. For some reason I cannot get the offline files
to actually function properly. I can connect and use the files fine
while online, but if I go offline, the files are not available and a
manual sync comes back with an error for every file saying "The
process cannot access the file because it is being used by another
process".

I know that sync issue isn't for this form and is a lower priority for
me than to get the 2k8 servers up and running. I just installed the
Vista computer first because I want to install server core on my
hardware and run Hyper-V off that and I know that I need vista or
another copy of 2k8 server to administer the core installation.

So after vista was set up, I installed Server Core on my physical
server following
http://technet2.microsoft.com/window....mspx?mfr=true
for refrence. I then did the following in order, I joined the server
to my domain, installed hyper-v and followed directions for additional
settings per the link above, activated the server, upgraded hyper-v to
RC version. I do not want to run anything other than hyper-v on my
physical server so I did not install options such as file sharing,
DNS, or any other option.

I then went to my Vista virtual computer, installed the remote admin
package and connected to my core server with the hyper-v manager. I
found I could connect, but could not make any machines. I found in a
random post that both the server and vista had to be activated before
I could manage the computer properly, so I activated my copy of vista
and then found that I could create a virtual machine. I decied that I
wanted to set up my vhd images on another partition, so I went into
computer management and set up a harddrive I had installed on the
physical computer but had not partitioned yet.

After my harddrive was formatted, I went back into the hyper-v manager
on the vista machine and set up my virtual networks. The physical
server has two network cards, so I set up "Physical Lan 1" and
"Physical Lan 2" that each point to their own network card. I then
set up an internal only network called "iSCSI Network" and a Private
virtual machine network called "Cluster Heartbeat".

I then started the new virtual machine wizard. I set up the new
machine name and store location. Set it with 2048MB memory, connected
it to the physical lan 1 network, created a vhd w/ a size of 40GB.
Selected install an operating system later, unchecked the option to
start the server when finished and clicked finish. I think opened the
settings and set the number of virtual processors to 4 (the number on
the physical computer). I have the Windows server CD in the physical
drive, so I set the virtual machine to mount it and then turned it on.

----------------------problem below-----------------------------------
The virtual server started up, loaded the CD and I saw a windows 2k8
server setup window with the language/time/keyboard options. When I
clicked on the virtual machine vindow, it says "To release your mouse
press CTRL+ALT+LEFT ARROW", but I cannot use my mouse on the virtual
machine. I see the curser in the upper left corner and I see a dot
where my actual mouse movement is.

At first I thought the VM was frozen, but I realized that I could use
the keyboard in the VM without a problem so I installed the full
version of the server only using my mouse. Everything seemed to
install properly, but I cannot figure out how to get my mouse or
network to function.

I was able to enable remote desktop connection and turn off the
windows firewall without a problem. I then dismounted the CD drive
and inserted the inserted the integration services setup disk and
install the integration services with a restart.

When the VM restarted, my mouse and network still didn't work, so I
used the keyboard to open the server manager and went to the device
manager and noticed that there were "!" on three different devices.
"Microsoft VMBus Video Device", "Microsoft VMBus HID Miniport", and
"Microsoft VMBus Network Adapter" all did not seem to work or start up
properly.

I'm not too conserned about the mouse if I can get the network adapter
working and can RDP in, but what is going on and why can't I get it to
work? I"ve tried removing each driver and reinstalling, but nothing
is working. Any advice? Does this have something to do with the fact
that I"m running the Hyper-V Manager on a Vista computer that is
actually a Virtual-PC?