Installing Virtual Server on Vista RC1

I just installed Virtual Server 2005 R2 on my Vista machine, I'm running Windows Vista Ultimate RC1, to see if I can get a bit more performance than what I have on my laptop. I knew from the start that there would be problems but I was not really prepared for some of the things. Or more to be more precise, I did not read the instructions good enough. I thought I would share my installation experience, it might help someone who makes the same mistakes as me (and I can use it for future reference as well :-).

The best resource I have found is a post by Virtual PC Guy, if you read this carefully you will be fine. I really must emphasize the need to run cmd.exe and IE as Administrator, if you don't it won't work!

The script which should be run from a command line:

start /w pkgmgr /l:log.etw /iu:IIS-WebServerRole;IIS-WebServer;IIS-CommonHttpFeatures;IIS-StaticContent;IIS-DefaultDocument;IIS-DirectoryBrowsing;IIS-HttpErrors;IIS-HttpRedirect;IIS-ApplicationDevelopment;IIS-ASPNET;IIS-NetFxExtensibility;IIS-ASP;IIS-CGI;IIS-ISAPIExtensions;IIS-ISAPIFilter;IIS-ServerSideIncludes;IIS-HealthAndDiagnostics;IIS-HttpLogging;IIS-LoggingLibraries;IIS-RequestMonitor;IIS-HttpTracing;IIS-CustomLogging;IIS-ODBCLogging;IIS-Security;IIS-BasicAuthentication;IIS-WindowsAuthentication;IIS-DigestAuthentication;IIS-ClientCertificateMappingAuthentication;IIS-IISCertificateMappingAuthentication;IIS-URLAuthorization;IIS-RequestFiltering;IIS-IPSecurity;IIS-Performance;IIS-HttpCompressionStatic;IIS-HttpCompressionDynamic;IIS-WebServerManagementTools;IIS-ManagementConsole;IIS-ManagementScriptingTools;IIS-ManagementService;IIS-IIS6ManagementCompatibility;IIS-Metabase;IIS-WMICompatibility;IIS-LegacyScripts;IIS-LegacySnapIn;IIS-FTPPublishingService;IIS-FTPServer;IIS-FTPManagement;WAS-WindowsActivationservice;WAS-ProcessModel;WAS-NetFxEnvironment;WAS-ConfigurationAPI

Running the script

My first few attempts to install failed with an error saying that the IIS Admin service was not started or installed. I had already run the script shown in the Virtual PC Guy post but it didn't seem to work, I could not find any IIS Admin Service in the list of services on the machine.

[UPDATE] This is what it looks like:

After a while I tried starting the Command Prompt (cmd.exe) as administrator. I did this navigating to Command Prompt in the Start menu, right-click, and the select Run as administrator. After the command had completed IIS Admin Service can be found in the list of services and the Virtual Server installation was completed successfully.

It's worth noting that you seem to be able to see if the script executed successfully by looking in one of the dialogs during Virtual Server setup. When IIS Admin was not installed the Website port field was empty and when I later had IIS Admin installed the field had content. I'm not sure if this is a 100% valid check, but you could at least use it to get an indication.

If IIS Admin Still not Installation 

[UPDATE] If you have run the big command line and still don't have IIS Admin installed you can install it manually. Today I installed a second Vista machine and this time I could not get IIS Admin to install by running the script. The solution was to manually select the IIS Metabase and IIS 6 configuration compatibility option in Windows Features. The picture below show which options I had selected.

Administrating Virtual Server

The other thing to remember is that you need to start IE as administrator as well when you wish to administrate Virtual Server. If you simply select the Virtual Server Administration Website short-cut in the menu you will get an error saying "Could not connect to Virtual Server. Access is denied.", see example below.

The way to do this is to right-click on IE and select Run as administrator, then you type (or paste) the URL to the Virtual Server website. Preferably you add this URL to Favorites to avoid typing it every time.

Before writing this post I had not found a way to right-click a short-cut and start it as administrator. But the first comment to this post told me to try https://blogs.msdn.com/virtual_pc_guy/archive/2006/07/24/675346.aspx, and that worked!

Error Starting Admin Website

Depending on which installation options you selected during manual configuration of IIS, if the script didn't work for you, you may encounter an error when starting the administration website. It's not really an error as the dialog asks you what to do with the VSWebApp.exe file: "Do you want to save this file, or find a program online to open it?". However, it's an error in this case as you want to open the Virtual Server admin site.

To resolve this problem you select the CGI option during IIS configuration, see example below.

Postscript

One thing that strikes me is that Virtual Server setup say that my version of IIS does not support multiple web sites (see screenshots above). But in Vista Ultimate (I don't know about other versions of Vista) I can actually create multiple web sites. I did not know this before installing Virtual Server but while trying to resolve my problems I opened the Internet Information Services MMC and noticed that I actually could create a new web site.

In XP it was not possible to create multiple web sites but that seems to have changed with Vista. However, Virtual Server 2003 R2 setup is not yet aware of this new feature in Vista.

UPDATE 2006-09-06: Added some more info on the installation of IIS Admin service.

UPDATE 2006-09-06 (again): Added new section on Error Starting Admin Website, plus link from a comment that solved a problem I had.