Vista - problems using virtual hard disks (VHD) with XP, VHDMount

I installed the latest version of Virtual Server w/VHDMount,
and the "take 2" registry Ben Armstrong posted on his blog
for quickly mounting VHD files
(see

http://blogs.msdn.com/virtual_pc_guy...it-take-2.aspx

or

http://blogs.msdn.com/virtual_pc_guy...aspx?q=vhd&p=1

for all his VHDMount articles)

and am having a lot of issues.... I am hoping someone
will be able to point out something obvious I did wrong
so I can get this to work...

I tried created a VHD image using Microsoft Virtual PC 2007
(I have tried both dynamic and fixed-size) and
partitioned/formatted them with NTFS. I right-clicked on the
VHD file and selected "plug in".

NOTE: what I describe happens whether I use the right-click
options, or from the command prompt use

VHDMount.exe /p VHDFileName
and
VHDMount.exe /u /c VHDFileName

The first thing strange is the drive did not appear in
My Computer so I opened
Computer Management > Disk Management
and see the drive (shows up as Disk 6, I have a media card
reader that takes up 2-5) is there but offline/disabled.
When I right-click it for Properties, I can enable it from
the dropdown. Or I can goto Device Manager > Disk drives
and it is listed with a red X, and I can right-click and
enable it. At this point it gets a drive letter.

I never had any issue with the driver - although just to be
sure I tried following the instructions to update the driver
and pointed it to the .inf files in

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Virtual Server\Vhdmount\

(vhdbus.inf and vhdstor.inf) but Windows says these are
not drivers for the device. It seems to already have a
working driver for this.

In any case, once I enable the drive, I get a drive letter
and can then copy files to the partition... sometimes.
I have a few large folders with many files (almost 4 GB,
~14,000 files) and when I try copying the files with
Explorer, it starts to work, but then I get an error saying
Windows cannot complete the task.

So I have to use my file compare utility (Beyond Compare
2.x). Sometimes it works (sort of) if there aren't too many
files or the file directory structure isn't too deep.

But then when I am done, I don't seem to be able to unmount
the drive. I right click on the VHD file and select Unplug
(commit changes) and nothing happens - the drive letter
still appears in My Computer and Disk Management.
It is only when I disable the drive in Disk Management or
Device Manager that I hear the chime (the sound you hear
when you Safely Remove Hardware) and the drive letter
goes away. Then if I try to re-enable, Windows asks me
to reboot (really inconvenient), and usually the system
gets unstable.

But usually I don't get that far - usually Beyond Compare
locks up 1/3 or 1/2 of the way through copying the files.
At this point Windows gets very unstable, to where it is
totally unresponsive except for my being able to move the
mouse pointer. I am unable to kill Beyond Compare or
Explorer in Task Manager, open any Windows in Explorer,
or shut down the PC without killing the power, let alone
Unplug the VHD to commit the changes.

After much frustration I gave up and tried a 3rd party
program (WinImage.com) but it doesn't seem to work with VHD
files except for letting you read & copy files from
NTFS-formmated volumes (no write). Supposedly it supports
writing to FAT32 volumes, but I can't even get it to open a
FAT32-formatted VHD file, it thinks it's unformatted.
And it doesn't support mounting VHD files to a drive letter,
you have to use its interface, so I can't use Beyond Compare
or other utility with it.

I have seen people posting how VHDMount works so great for
them, I am wondering if there is anything obvious I am doing
wrong, or if it has to do with my antivirus
(McAfee's AOL edition), which does not seem to allow me to
make VHD files "exempt" from virus scanning.

Any help appreciated!

----------

Articles:

Double clicking on a VHD to mount it (take 2)
http://blogs.msdn.com/virtual_pc_guy...it-take-2.aspx

Playing with the final version of VHDMount
http://blogs.msdn.com/virtual_pc_guy...-vhdmount.aspx

Using VHDMount under Windows XP
http://blogs.msdn.com/virtual_pc_guy...05/740763.aspx



Downloads:

Download Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 today
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/e.../bb738033.aspx

Download or Order Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 Enterprise Edition for
Free
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/vir...e/default.mspx

WinImage utility
http://winimage.com/winimage.htm