Vista - Shutdown guest OS problem

Hi all,

New to Virtual Server, but been playing with it for a week or so now.

I have a script that backs up the virtual machine files by putting
the VM into a saved state - that works fine.

The problem with backing up the saved state for disaster revocery
purposes is that to restor it you need a machine with the sam RAM,
CPU Type and CPU Class.

I would rather shutdown the guest OS and save the vmc and vhd files,
which could then be restarted on any machine hosting virtual server.

The Virtual macinne is a workgroup server, not a domain controller.

The problem is that after the server is running for a while the
shutdown guest option is no longer avaiable, and the script shutfdown
fails as well.

Now I understand that if the VM is in a certain state (not sure what
state that is, running a progrma for example) it will no allow a
'remote' shutdown but only a user initiated shutdown via the start
button.

So my problem/question is this - What is causing the VM to enter
a start that makes it think it cannot be shutdown by the virtual
server?

I have tried to determine at what point the 'shutdown guest os' option
becomes unavalable, but it seems to happen sometime overnight. I'm
thinking the only thing that seems to be happing then is the automatic
update check - so I'm in the process of testing that theory.

I modified the backup script to first attempt an OS shutdown and if
that fails to save the VM - this way I alwyas get a backup, but since
the VM can never be shutdown I always get the saved state - not the
most desirable. To me this seems like a big issue, I want to use
virtual machines for disaster recovery purposes and the saved state
is not as portable as I would like.

Thanks,

kpg

I have a tenative answer to my own question:

If the os gets locked due to the screen saver coming on
then a shutdown does not seem possible.

By disabling the screen saver I have (so far) been able
to shutdown the os even after several hours of uptime.

There was some confusion on my part about this becuase
the virtual server vm menu had the "shutdown guest"
available at this time and the guestOS scripting objects
CanShutdown method returned True. But an attempt to
shutdown using either of those fails.

It makes sense now.

I like the security the locked state provides, but I also
like useful backups.

There are 3rd party solutions to this problem (backing up a
running vm) but what I have works pretty good as an automated
minimal downtime full backup solution, except for the not
being able to lock the server.

kpg