Vista - Virtual PC 2007 SP1 disables host TCP/IP!?

Here's a good one... I got Virtual PC 2007 SP1 up and running on my machine (Vistax64, SP1) and created a Win98 VM: no troubles there, everything worked great, including networking. I quit the VM after a time and tooled around in Vista for a while, everything was still great.

I rebooted the machine, then things were no longer great: I noticed that the networking icon in the systray was "Red X'ed", and there was no network connectivity. Ran the "diagnosis" routine and was informed that "the network adaptor was not properly configured to use TCP/IP." Ran IPCONFIG, and everything was blank: no IP addy's, no nothing. Fooled around in the Network and Sharing center for a bit, did everything I could think of, but no luck: Windows doesn't see any available networks to connect to.

I then uninstalled Virtual PC 2007, and the NIC came back to life immediately: the "red x" changed to an exclamation point before the uninstall had even finished, then the NIC connected normally to my router. All was great again...

I guess you've anticipated my question: what the hey is up with this, and how do I avoid it? I love Virtual PC, and don't want to have to install/uninstall it every time I use it!

Thanks in advance,

ara

Thanks for the help...

Just kidding, ladies and gents, I've found a workaround for the problem: it's apparently critical to use the networking driver that VPC installs, even when the application isn't running. No idea why, but I've verified it several times. When I revert back to the hardware manufacturer's driver (NVidia), TCP/IP connectivity is lost and the systray icon is "red x'ed" after rebooting the system. It's possible to reinstall any version of the NIC driver at this point and restore the connection, but upon rebooting the connection routinely fails again EXCEPT when the Microsoft VPC network driver is used.

ara

"aragornnn" <guest@xxxxxx-email.com> wrote in message
news:6f1de4d70a1f89d6dfd0a5d533523a50@xxxxxx-gateway.com...Sounds like there is a conflict between the NIC driver and Virtual
Machine Network Services (which is the component that enables the vm to use
the physical NIC).

Have you checked for an updated driver on the nVidia site?

Thanks Bill: I've just found a reference regarding this very issue: it is a known problem with Nforce chipsets and has apparently still not been fixed. Here is the link if anyone is interested:

Feedback: Network issues on Vista with Virtual PC 2007

Note: I have been able to circumvent the issue by installing the Microsoft NIC driver. So far, so good...

ara