I installed a copy of Vista onto a Virtual PC for testing purposes and due to the way this PC is configured Virtual PC always catches me out and sets the default network adaptor as my VPN which means I can’t get any internet connectivity on the Virtual PC, once switched over I also need to change the DNS settings of the PC to work with our router.

The issue I came across this morning though was Microsoft Vista’s activation grace period had expired and there was no way to update the DNS settings to allow the Virtual PC access to the internet to activate my copy which meant I was locked out with no way of updating the network settings to allow validation!

Note: this is just an evaluation copy that you can download from Microsoft so the key won't validate on the release version!

Calling the helpline sorts the issue but it was a 20minute phone call of entering in digits I could have done without!