All,
I'm currently in the midst of doing a massive conversion from physical machines to VMs. Unfortunately I've run into a snag on a machine conversion from a Dell GX280 to VM on Windows 2003. It seems that when I convert these machines, I don't seem to get any mouse or keyboard response from the converted VM. This happened one other time and I was able to get around it by forcibly injecting the VMWare tools into the system using autologin and a script that fires on startup. That machine was running XP and worked beautifully.
In this case, my autologin fires but I get a dialog from Microsoft saying that I need to re-activate the product within 3 days because the hardware changed. Since I can't get mouse or keyboard input, I can't click the button for "No" in order to bypass the message so I can get the proper drivers installed and then re-activate. Does anyone know how to bypass this message temporarily? I really need to get this machine converted for a test I have to perform.
I tried this in safe mode but I get another dialog explaining that I'm in "Safe Mode" (thanks, Mr. Obvious) and I need to click okay but again no mouse or keyboard input. If you by chance, know how to bypass that helpful message, it might get me further also.
Thanks,
Todd