Running on Windows 7 it obvious you would use the new Windows Virtual PC Beta.

There is a problem however, when you want to run a Server2008 virtual PC. The server it self runs great, and is much faster than Virtual PC2007, but like in Virtual server2005 Drag’n Drop is not supported.

This Should basically not be a problem because the integration features gives you access to all the host machines drives (including USB).  Only problem is that it doesn’t seam to work on Server2008. It might work at first, but after a couple of reboots the integration features suddenly will not install…

The workaround is simply to restart the “Virtual PC Integration Components Services Application” service.

Her is what I did after the integration features started to error.

image After starting the virtual 2008 server, it takes quiet a while for the installing integration features to run, and eventually a dialog appears telling you that the features could not be enabled.

Click Continue. 

image If you click Tools you will notice that it is not possible to enable integration features (grayed out)

Click Settings

image In settings choose Integration Features  and remove the check mark in Enable at startup.

I do this to skip the install integration features dialog as it will fail anyway.

Note: If you restart the server with the features enabled, it will try and install again, and fail !!

image Star a command prompt and type
net stop “Virtual PC Integration Components Services Application”

net start ”Virtual PC Integration Components Services Application”

image If you click Tools you will notice that it is now possible to enable integration features 

Click Enable Integration Features

image If you open windows explorer you will notice that there is now a lot of new disks pointing to the host machines locale drives and shares.

 

That’s it.  Integration features are now available.