Sharepoint/RTM Demo VHD on Vmware Workstation 7.

At last I got the "2010 Information Worker Demonstration and Evaluation Virtual Machine (RTM)" working on my vmware workstation 7. Thanks to this Vmware Community post and this link on sanbarrow.com

Here is the procedure that I used.

• Convert the VHD image to VMDK (SCSI Disk) using Starwind V2V converter. It took quite amount of time to convert the disk. 
• Created a new virtual machine with following settings.
• Custom (advanced) installation.
• Hardware Compatibility : Workstation 6.5-7.x
• Guest Operating System Selection : I will install operating system later
• Guest Operating System : Microsoft Windows , Version : Windows Server 2008 x64
• Virtual machine name : Windows Server 2008 x64, Location : c:\users\......
• Number of processors and cores : 1
• Memory : 1 GB
• Network Type : NAT
• SCSI Controller : LSI Logic SAS
• Disk : Use an existing virtual disk
• Existing Disk File : (select the VMDK file generated using Starwind V2V converter)
• Click Next and Click Finish.

• Boot the system normally. You will mostly end up with Blue Screen Of Death (BSOD). The system will automatically restart and during start up it will offer you to "Launch Startup Repair". Select it and the system will ask you to select the language and then to enter the administrator password. The default password is 'pass@word1'. Once you enter it you will be provided with a small window with different options. Select the "Command Prompt" option.

• A CMD window will open with X:\.... prompt. Type the command "regedit" and press enter, it will provide you with the regular registry editor window.

• From the list select HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE a.k.a HKLM and then from the menu select File > Load Hive. Browse to C:\ (or which ever you virtual disk) windows\system32\config and select SYSTEM. It will ask for a name for the new loaded hive, name it p2v.

• Now find the key 

HKLM\p2v\ControlSet001\services\LSI_SAS

and set the Start REG_DWORD to 0 (it was 3 for me, for some people it was 4). Now select HLKM\p2v and from menu select File > Upload Hive. Select "yes" when asked for confirmation. Close the regedit and restart the VM.

If every thing is ok, you should get the windows 2008 server running by now.