I just purchased a new machine with vista 64 SP1 .. that i intended to use as a test machine.
what i was planning to do was:
– install vmware on it and have 1 vmachine as a server and 5~6 vmachines as workstations connected to the server all running at the same time .. so i could carry out some test before i let loose on the production network.
the problem is:
– vista 64 SP 1 enforces digital driver signing i.e. drivers that affect the kernel in any way must be digitally signed by the developer (which vmware has not done)
I have googled for days and every work around I have found does not work for SP1 including putting the OS in test mode OR hitting F8 on boot up and explicitly selecting the “disable enforcing driver signing” at every boot up OR editing “bcdedit.exe” but nothing seems to work.
One alternative is, to use Virtual box which is digitally signed by sun micro systems instead of vmware.My guys are all familiar with vmware … which they have been trained on.
but that wont help in the future when a similar thing happens with an unsigned driver.
any help would be appreciated with:
– disable the requirement for digitally signed drivers
– a better idea for a test lab (this machine already took out a big chunk of change in my budget )