Megan Davis has an article available on using sysprep to use a copied .vhd to avoid having to re-setup the base operating system time and again.  I love the SysPrep tip, but I use it on a “Base” .vhd (virtual hard disk), then I create differencing hard disks against that.  This way, I only have one copy of the base 1.3GB OS install on my hard drive, and I can create a new machine using only the virtual server administration console.  The disk savings are pretty meager, but being able to use only the web site to create and run a new machine is pretty nifty.

But no matter how well laid the plans of men (and optical mice), it seems there's always something leading us astray...

So I was trying to install team foundation system from the December CTP onto virtual machines hosted in virtual server.   I have an AMD 3500+ with 2GB ram running headless. After installing the host OS and virtual server itself, I yanked out the DVD drive before stuffing the machine in the closet.

So I create a machine, install XP, sysprep it, create a new machine with a differencing hard drive, and try to install VS2005 Team System.

*bzzzzz* - thanks for trying!  Try again, just to make sure - *bzzz*.  Start from scratch - *bzzz*!

Okay, let's remove variables.   Install XP only.   No problem. Install Visual Studio Beta 1.  *bzzzz*   Every time, I get something about corrupted files... different ones every time.  The host OS is running fine, no problems.

Hmm.. So I put back the DVD drive.  Start over... *bzzzz*.  I run disk testing tools - no problems.  I re-download the ISO's from msdn. I try it from an image, from daemon tools, from a physical disk -- all no problems.

Then, I run memtest86 (very easy to use - I burned the supplied iso and booted from it).  Bad memory -- very bad.   So I swap out the offending chip and all is groovy.   

I find it puzzling that I could run windows 2003 on the machine with no problems (not a single one!). I could install Windows XP into a virtual machine - no problems.  Troubleshooting for a week with no stop errors - very odd.  Thank goodness I finally got it working.