inside the brain

Here is what I learned over the last few days using Virtual Server 2005 R2.

Do not pause all running VMs, power down the host machine, change the hardware configuration and power it up again.

I found when removing a network card which wasn’t part of any bridge when you unpause the virtual machines you will find them disconnected from the network. When you shut down the VM and try restart it you may run into an error where it says it cannot get an read/write lock on the virtual hard disk.

Copying the hard disk to a new file and pointing the VM to boot from that will allow it to boot but it will crash shortly afterwards. The only solution is to power all VMs down and reboot the host machine. Then you should be able to boot all your VMs again without any problem.