There is a well-known issue with installing Vista onto a VPC. If you were to do a web search on the term "D:\Sources\install.wim" you'll get plenty of hits. I read a lot of blogs and articles telling me how to get around the problem but didn't succeed until I found my own way.

Here's the scenario.

I have an MSDN subscription so I used the Vista install disc included in that. The disc I had in hand was from the January 2007 shipment. This was a regular install disc, not one with an ISO file on it.

I created my VPC (doing this on a Vista ultimate computer using VPC 2007) and tried the install. I got past the intial screens where you enter your license key. Then it succesfully copied the necessary files, but then I got the error: Windows cannot open the required file d:\sources\install.wim. Then the installation was cancelled.

My DVD drive was H:, not D:, so I changed my drive letter configuration so that the DVD drive was D: and tried again with the same failure.

I read in many blogs that I should install from an ISO and that would solve the problem. I happened to have an ISO install that I downloaded a while ago and tried that. Unfortunately, that ISO doesn't seem to have the boot files included.

So I was up a creek and kept going round and round trying to trick my computer into letting one of these installations succeed, but to no avail.

Digging through my MSDN discs, I found another disc that had on it ISO images for Vista and XP. Not a DVD ISO image, but 5 files for Vista because they are designed for CDs. Each ISO is in a separate folder which represents each of the 5 CDs that the installation is distributed across.

Happily, I was able to install with these!

Here's how.

I used the VPC's "Capture ISO Image" function and pointed to the ISO in the CD1 folder. That kicked in the autoplay and the setup process began. Throughout the installation (which was much slower than with the regular installation DVD) I was asked to insert CD2, CD3, CD4, CD5 then CD1 again. Each tiem, I merely hit the Capture ISO Image function again, pointing to the ISO of the correct CD.

So now I have a nice base VPC image for Vista which I will tuck away and make copies of each tme I want a new Vista VPC.