oh dear. not good. but, at least, you get to put the virtualization process through some decent testing.

fingers crossed.

Hm, sounds like some weird networking problems, worked fine for me - my fileserver runs samba, though, and not normal windows filesharing... but that really should work.

As for activation status, no idea - I'm deliberately not activating Windows before booting it on the target machine. Other software obviously depends on how the DRM crap is implemented... >_<

Carol, any progress with the networking? I might try playing around over the weekend if I get some time.

Anyway, I got around to doing a pretty full VMWare setup for the stuff I need on my laptop (which is somewhat less than my workstation, but still quite a lot - visual studio, sql server express, you name it - ~24GB disk image). Tested it superficially on my testing box, then deployed on my laptop. Didn't inject any drivers when doing the "P2P Adjust", had to install intel chipset drivers + intel graphics drivers + ACPIHIDMAPPER driver, and that resolved all that was missing. So far, everything seems good, but I'll test it properly for a couple of days before jumping to conclusions.

Certainly hope it works out well, so I can construct an image for my workstation... 5 days until the Win7 RC runs out, heh. Took me a couple of days speccing the requirements for the laptop image, can reuse most of that for the workstation - but it'll probably take two days of work sorting out the rest + creating image. Woop.

Sorry for the late notice, but Paragon Virtualization Manager 9.5 is available at no cost on GAOTD for the next 2 hours or so (Mar 10, 2010):

http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/paragon-virtualization-manager-2010-personal-english/

You can get the license key from http://www.paragon-software.com/registration/vm95pers.html

Apparently the only difference between this free 9.5 version and version 10 is that the free version doesn't come with a WinPE recovery disk image,  That might limit its' usefulness, but might still provide some value.

Also, the full version 10 will be available at half price ($15) on BitsDuJour on March 18, 2010:

http://www.bitsdujour.com/software/paragon-virtualization-manager-2010-personal/

No haven't figured it out yet. Dropped Paragon an email and awaiting reply.

Had a series of replies which didn't seem to make much sense ...

Apparently I need to install LAN drivers when using the WinPE disc. I find this slightly odd as I can see the workgroup computers when running the WinPE disc and I can also see the folders but I can't see any files at all. Surely if I need drivers I wouldn't see anything at all?

Having explained all this the conversation dried up. Anyone got any ideas?

If I do need drivers for an integrated ethernet port how do I extract the correct drivers for WinPE? The only drivers I can find are motherboard drivers that come in a Windows .exe package?

That's what I figured but I can't see why the VM disc image files (and all other files too) aren't showing up.

I am using Windows XP Pro SP3 as my network destination and I have tried both simple file sharing and proper file sharing and in both cases only the folders appear on the machine run PVM WinPE disk.