Here’s the SlideRocket presentation for tomorrow’s DC VMUG.  My first real time playing with VMware’s Slide Rocket. It took me a few crashes of PowerPoint to move to SlideRocket (even after I had included it in the recent VMware Acquisitions slide).  Overall a pretty good experience!

This presentation is subject to change (I’m running out of steam tonight).  If/when I do update it on SlideRocket, this embedded deck will just magically update – the magic of the cloud!

Feel free to comment with changes or suggestions for other free utilities and scripts!  I  added a Scripts & Free Tools page to http://vmtoday.com today with some embedded Google Docs spreadsheets to keep a running list of the cool VMware scripts and tools that I come across. I’ve found and promptly forgotten so many over the years – hopefully this helps me as much as it helps you in finding and saving some great community resources!

I recently ran into an issue when installing my first Windows Server 2008 R2 virtual machine.  The VM would hang/freeze randomly when used through the VMware vCenter Client’s console.  It turns out this is a known issue (see this VMware KB Article) with the SVGA driver that is installed as part of the default installation of VMware Tools.  While the article does not explain why you should disable the SVGA driver, it’s advice is correct if you want to avoid problems in your guest VM.  To correct my problem, I removed the SVGA driver from the Windows Device Manager and rebooted.  If you are having problems removing the SVGA driver before the VM hangs, use Remote Desktop to access the guest machine to perform the driver uninstall.  I have not observed hanging/freezing in the VM since removing the SVGA driver from my Windows 2008 R2 guest.  Note that this same issue is present in Windows 7.