RDP / Hostname Issues when Cloning XP VM

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SKahle83
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RDP / Hostname Issues when Cloning XP VM

Post by SKahle83 »

I went through the painstaking effort of doing a clean Windows XP install on a Virtual Station 3 VM, doing all the updates, tracking down all the legacy installers that will work. The whole process took half a day or more. Once it was up and running, I could connected to it over VNC through VS3, but also over Windows RDP by IP address or hostname.

Now I need to create 3 more VMs that are essentially the same thing. I go ahead and clone the original VM, fire up the clone, change the IP address,change the computer name, and then re-join the domain. However, if I try to RDP either by IP or hostname, I get the "Cannot connect: Remote access is disabled / the computer is turned off / the computer is not available on the network" error.

Okay, so lets ping the VM and make sure its there. I can ping it by IP address, but not by hostname. When I try to return the hostname by using "ping -a 192.168.1.XXX" no hostname is returned. If I do this for the original VM, it returns the computer name "DSWS1" as expected.

I am pretty new to virtualization, so I went out on the web and tried a million different things. I even went a change EVERY registry entry that referred to DSWS1 and changed it to DSWS2. However, my issue still persists. I'd like to be able to set up a "template" VM and then stamp out client VMs as more are required and avoid the intensive installation effort. I know its WinXP and has been EOL for half a decade now, but I am trying to preserve a legacy system in a virtual environment. Any pointers on what to do? What I should have done? There is talk about running the System Preparation Tool (Sysprep) on the original machine, but I'm a little nervous to do that since its my only working client right now.
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storageman
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Re: RDP / Hostname Issues when Cloning XP VM

Post by storageman »

SKahle83
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Re: RDP / Hostname Issues when Cloning XP VM

Post by SKahle83 »

You are correct. I went ahead and ran sysprep on one of the clones, and that allowed me to enter a unique product key which resulted in a computer name and SID, and then allowed my device to be pinged by hostname as well as IP address.
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