Lessons from the field: Virtual PC

Today’s lesson is: Virtual PC and shared folders are slow. I mean really, really slow. Try install Exchange Server 2003 Service Pack 1 into a VM with the source files in a shared folder (Virtual PC shared folders), I almost slit my wrists waiting for that to install. It ended up taking well over an hour. My work around: ROBOCOPY the sources files onto the VM’s hard drive and install from there.