Error 2337 Installing SQL Server 2008R2 in Virtual PC 2007

Issue

Last year I was preparing for an fwPASS presentation on Report Viewer 3.0 by installing SQL Server 2008R2 in a virtual machine using Virtual PC 2007. I kept getting an error 2337 indicating that the disk may have been corrupt or damaged. I was installing it from a .iso image I downloaded from my MSDN Ultimate subscription. I used the Virtual PC “capture iso image” functionality to mount the iso as a disk. I downloaded another copy of the iso image and repeated the process with the same results. Due to time constraints, I reverted back to SQL Server 2005 and Report Viewer 2.0 for that presentation, highlighting features new to 3.0 using screenshots.

Physical and Hyper-V Success

Since then I have successfully installed SQL Server 2008R2 successfully multiple times on bare metal physical servers and in VM’s using Hyper-V Server 2008.

VPC Still an Issue

Fast forward to this week. I was setting up a development sandbox in a VM. Again I was installing SS2008R2 by mounting the image in VPC 2007 and was faced with the same Error 2337. Seriously? This issue hasn’t been resolved yet? A quick search on the error resulted in this helpful post Getting error 2337 installing SQL Server on a VPC on the SQL Skills blog.

Solution

I didn’t have any blank DVD’s on hand for burning the image, so I decided I would use MagicDisc to mount the iso file on my host machine, instead of using VPC’s capture iso functionality. That solved the problem.