Unable to Activate Office 2010 Beta or Windows 7 Guest OS, Run Windows Update or Join a Domain from Hyper-V VM
As noted in my SharePoint Nightmare: Installing the SPS 2010 Public Beta on Windows 7 post of 11/27/2009, I am running 64-bit Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V as the host OS with the hope of running the Office Professional and SharePoint Server 2010 Public Beta versions in a 64-bit Windows 7 virtual machine. The earlier post includes detailed information about the developer computer’s Intel processor and mother board, as well as other components.
Update 11/29/2009 1:00 PM PST: Liam Westley of Kew, London, UK (@westleyl) suggested changing the physical NIC for the External Network from the RTL8169 shown here in the Virtual Network Manager:
To the on-board Intel NIC shown here:
Thanks to Liam’s suggestion:
Exchanging the physical NICs displayed a warning message about loss of connectivity, but there was no immediate indication of any problem.
I was able to successfully activate the Office 2010 Public Beta with a Multiple Access Key (MAK), run Windows Update, join the oakleaf.org domain, sign on to Windows Messenger, and sign into connect.microsoft.com with my Live ID credentials. However, I still can’t sign into skydrive.live.com. Guess I should have tried Twitter earlier!
P.S.: Liam owns a company, Tiger Computer Services Ltd, which is an Independent Software Vendor (ISV) providing .NET software solutions to clients in the London area. Here’s a link to his blog.
Many people have reported problems activating Office 2010 Beta (v. 14.0.4536.1000) with Windows XP SP3, Windows Vista SP2 and Windows 7. Most activation failures report 0x80072EE2 or similar error codes, as shown here for my 64-bit Windows 7 Professional VM:
TechNet’s Microsoft Office 2010 Beta forum has a lengthy thread about this problem, MS Office 2010 BETA Activation Error 0x80072EE2, which was posted on 11/21/2009 but doesn’t offer a workaround.
I was forced to activate my Windows 7 guest OS by telephone, but Office 2010 Beta’s telephone activation option is disabled.
I have no problem activating Windows 7 Professional or Windows 2010 Beta (x64) running under the Windows Server 2008 R2 host OS.
Running Windows Update from the VM’s Windows 7 guest OS ran once, but displayed the following error message with the same error code thereafter:
The Microsoft Knowledge Base article KB836941 of 7/23/2008, You may encounter temporary connection-related errors when you use Windows Update or Microsoft Update to install updates suggests several workarounds, none of which work for me under the VM. Clicking the Get help with this error link opens the following Offline Help window:
Clicking the Online Help link gives more options, but none suggest a specific workaround for Hyper-V VMs:
No suggested workaround worked for me.
Attempts to join my internal (10.7.0.0, 255.255.0.0) oakleaf.org domain from the System Properties’ Computer Name page fail with a timeout error. Details about this (unresolved) issue are in the Problem with Win 7 Prof VM on Win 2008 R2 Server Hyper-V Joining AD Domain with Win 2003 R2 Server DC thread of the Windows 7 Networking forum.
Update 11/29/2009: By exchanging NICs for the External Network, I was able to join the oaklear.org domain and have updated the forum thread.
Attempts to sign into sites with LiveID authentication, such as connect.microsoft.com and skydrive.live.com fail in the guest OS VM but succeed in the host OS.
Possible Network Configuration Issues
The Windows Server 2003 R2 domain controller is multihomed with RRAS NAT to an AT&T /24 commercial bank of five fixed IP addresses and the private 10.7.0.0 network at 10.7.5.2 by an 8-port 10/100 Mbps switch. This configuration has been working as expected since the release of Windows 2000 Server. (It’s described on pp. 1,056 to 1,065 of my Special Edition Using Windows 2000 Server book.)
Here’s the Network and Sharing diagram for the host OS:
And the Network diagram, which in this case doesn’t show the OAKLEAF-DC1 domain controller. Notice that the Network Location is Unidentified Network, not oakleaf.org 3 or Domain Network:
The Windows Server 2008 R2 host (OL-VIRTSERVER5) OS has its Local Area Connection virtual NIC (for Unidentified Network) fixed to 10.7.5.5 (ping –4 ol-virtserver5 returns 10.7.5.5):
Pinging 10.7.5.4 and 10.7.5.69 succeeds.
Following is the Network and Sharing diagram for the guest OS:
And the guest OS’s Network diagram:
The Windows 7 guest OS obtains its 10.7.5.69 address from the OakLeaf-DC1 DHCP server’s range of 10.7.5.64 to 10.7.5.127:
Ping discloses one connectivity problem with the private network or internet:
Although I can access the DRoot share on OAKLEAF-WV21 and save files, but with a long response time, for unknown reasons I can no longer ping the workstation. I’m unable to open .png files saved to \\OAKLEAF-WV21\DRoot by Paint.net.
I’d appreciate any assistance Hyper-V experts can provide to overcome these problems.
Thanks in advance for your help.
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