Vista - Problems making a W2003 guest start after host reboot

I am running VS2005 R2 SP1 on a Win XP Pro SP2 workstation.
My XP-Pro machine is a member of a domain, which is *not* accessible
at all times. I connect to the main domain (where the Active Directory
host is located) via VPN tunneling over the Internet.

The problem I am having is that the VS2005 guest does not start up
with my host system. I have a single Win 2003 server guest and I use
this for various tasks such as hosting a CVS repository and also
supplying VPN connectivity into my home network (using RRAS services).
Of course if the host reboots and the guest won't start then I am in
trouble....

I usually leave my XP PC on all the time, it had been running for 1600
hours today. But after a Windows update install a reboot was needed so
I let the update proceed with the boot.
Afterwards my VS2005 guest could not start up (again).

I have tried all kinds of guest settings to make it happen but to no
avail. Guest startup/shutdown settings are as follows:

- Action: "Save State" (I have also tried "Turn off guest")
- Run this vm with specified account checked.
- Account info:
- Username= my account name
- Password= my account password
- When VS starts: Always automatically turn on virtual machine
- Start up delay: 30 s

I have tried various other accounts to run the guest with but it seems
to make no difference.

The Virtual Server event log has a few entries from the reboot that
might shed some light on this for more knowledgeable persons than
myself (latest entry at the top):

At 10:09:39
An error has occured during the creation of Service Connection points
for Virtual Server in Active Directory. Either a domain controller is
not available to complete the operation or there is a security problem
accessing the domain. This operation will be retried the next time the
service starts. Error 0x8007054b - The specified domain either does
not exist or could not be contacted.

At 10:09:39
The service principal name for the VMRC server could not be
registered. Automatic authentication will always use NTLM
authentication. Error 0x8007054b - The specified domain either does
not exist or could not be contacted.

At 10:09:39
Virtual Server successfully started.

At 10:09:39
The service principal names for Virtual Server could not be
registered. Constrained delegation cannot be used until the SPNs have
been registered manually. Error 0x8007054b - The specified domain
either does not exist or could not be contacted.

At 10:02:38
Virtual Server is attempting to stop.

I am highly dependent on this server always running in order to reach
my LAN from the Internet when I am in other locations so it MUST be
able to start properly when the host starts up irrespective of why the
host was stopped (power surge, normal reboot or whatever).

Is VS2003R2SP1 requiring direct access to the domain to which the host
PC is attached in order to be able to start a guest?????
This seems rather like a Catch 22 case then because in order to get on
to the system so a VPN tunnel to the domain can be established the
guest server must first be running. And if it runs there is no need
for the VPN tunnel...

I also tried to shut down the VS2005 service, then connect the VPN
tunnel to the domain and then start the service.
This time there are no error messages in the Event log, but the guest
does not start anyway....

If I open up the VMRC+ 1.7 application I use to manage this virtual
server it lists the guest as being in saved state.
When I click the start button I get an error message:

"The virtual machine could not be started. An unexpected error
occurred".

Then I used the command to discard the saved state and tried again to
start it but the same stupid error message appeared..

What the heck do I do now????????
Where can I look for clues to why it won't start, the Event Log shows
nothing related to this....

Any advice appreciated.

--

Bo Berglund (Sweden)

On Fri, 27 Jun 2008 12:11:41 +0200, Bo Berglund <boberglund@xxxxxx>
wrote:
In desperation I shut down the VS2005 service, then renamed the guest
directory to .bak and copied the VHD file to a new directory with the
same name as the old one. Since I had undo disks enabled this copy is
dated back in April.
Next I started the VS2005 service, connected with VMRC+ and created a
new guest based on the old VHD file. I had to accept some dialogues in
the process talking about missing links to the old guest and such, but
when I had this all sorted the new machine actually did start up.

I had to do this back in April as well when my house was subjected to
a power outage and then the guest did not start up properly on power
return and could not be started manually either.

The problem now at hand is:
*Exactly how* should I configure the VS2005 guest such that I
guarantee that it starts up with my XP-Pro machine?

After all the whole purpose of using VS2005 instead of VPC2007 is that
the guests can be made to run automatically with noone logged on to
the host system, right? Seems not to work that way...

All of my VPC2007 guests run just fine as do my VMWare WorkStation
guests too. It is just this VS2005 system that is causing all the
problems....

--

Bo Berglund (Sweden)