Windows 7 – Fun with VHD

I’m teaching about TFS 2008 next week and I wanted to use TFS in a virtualized environment so I downloaded the TFS + Team Suite VPC image from Microsoft’s Website.  Working with Windows 7, I opened the VM with the built-in Windows Virtual PC.  The VM loads fine but the problems started when I tried to install the VM additions: I simply couldn’t get them to install properly.

I then looked at VMware and found that they have a product called VMware Player that can load Virtual PC VMs.  Tried that but VMware Player failed in converting the VHD.

I then looked at VirtualBox.  Created a new VM, attached the VHD and bingo!  Worked like a charm.  The only real caveat is that the guest Windows will ask for the OS CDs to install new drivers so you must have either the CD/DVD or the ISO file (sweet!) to proceed.

OK, I got it working in VirtualBox but I’m curious why I couldn’t install the additions from Windows 7 Virtual PC onto a Windows Server 2003 VM.  Anyone has a clue?

BTW, thanks to Rolly Perreaux who pointed my to his blog where he goes into great details explaining how to use VM images with VirtualBox.  Good stuff!