System Center Guide

Like several others I’ve just ran into an issue with the Virtual Machine Manager installation. It would pass all prerequisite and then fail during the VMM portion of the setup with the following error message:

vmm ID: 205. Details: Fatal error during installation

Now, not being one to accept the 15-character limit description that TechNet refers to, I began searching some of the online forums and while they described doing things like renaming the box or – worse – removing a child domain from the FQDN, that didn’t make much sense to me either. While I could agree that DNS was a problem – especially when I noticed the degradation of my login time – I didn’t think changing the naming/domain structure would do it.

Sure, enough… after I had upgraded the server to Windows Server R2, SP2 it had changed the TCP/IP properties of my network adapter to DHCP-based settings. That’d be fine and good if my DHCP server was a real DHCP server. Instead, I’m using the DHCP servlet in my wireless router. Cheesy, I know. But it works and allows me to connect to my personal systems as well. So, after I changed my adapter properties to the correct TCP/IP settings… including a proper DNS server… I could once again access Active Directory properly and successfully complete the VMM installation.

So, if you’re still pulling your hair out with this one, try going back to the basics and keeping things simple.