I have installed Virtual PC 2007 on my Vista laptop and have installed XP Pro as a guest virtual machine. XP Pro installed just fine, but when I try to next install the virtual machine additions, I keep getting the following error message: "The Windows Installer Service cannot be accessed. This can occur if you are running Windows in Safe Mode, or if the installer is not correctly installed." I am not running in Safe Mode - just inside the guest machine. Does anyone know of a work-around or fix for this problem as it specifically pertains to running the XP Pro OS as a guest in Virtual PC 2007? I can't update the guest XP Pro OS to SP2, because I also don't seem to have access to my Network - perhaps because I need to have the additions installed first? Thanks in advance!

hi see method1 http://helpdeskgeek.com/how-to/how-... or try virtualbox new version automatically installs vm additions http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Down...

Thanks, 1Step... Method 1 worked. The strange thing, though... I seem to be missing a lot of the XP Pro OS in the virtual machine. When running a guest OS in a virtual machine, are we only able to run a very striped-down version of the guest OS? For instance, here's one example: I don't seem to have any way of changing the desktop image to anything other than a solid color - no XP themes, schemes or screen savers. All options are for Windows Classic style only. Is this normal? Or have I missed a step somewhere when installing/configuring? Thanks!

hi just installed xp pro sp3 from cd on xp client and it works ok i.e desktop changes etc not tried on vista may give it a whirl tommorow, im wondering can i copy the .vhd file to vista and run it on vpc2007? save reinstalling it all over. note im using vpc2007sp1 http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/... (tho i prefer virtualbox as it seems to be more user friendly, vpc2007 seems slow) useful link http://www.petri.co.il/virtual_inst...