Activating Office and Setting up External Networking on the VPC

The Problem

If you use the Microsoft Dynamics AX R2 VPC, you'll eventually run into issues when trying to use the Office tools. I ran into this the first time when trying to use the AX 2009 Excel Export Wizard. The export failed because it couldn't generate a writable Excel file. I figured out that it was because my Office suite hadn't been activated.

To activate Office on the VPC, you will need to be able to connect the VPC to the internet. This requires a configuration tweak to the VPC. Lachlan Cash addresses both these topics in his blog. The post that deals with setting up the external networking can be found here: http://blogs.msdn.com/lcash/archive/2009/07/21/setting-up-external-networking-on-the-demo-vms.aspx

What follows below is a write up based on his video, along with some notes of my own.

 

Setting up External Networking on the VPC

Go to the Settings panel for the VPC, then choose the Networking option. See below for the default settings.

You'll want to leave Adapter 1 set to Local only, and change Adapter 2 to whatever networking card you have on your PC. Lachlan recommends that you not use your wireless card.

Next, you'll want to start the VPC itself. Once the start up is complete, click Start (on the VPC) > Control Panel > Network Connections, then right-click on Local Area Connection 2 and choose Enable.

In Lachlan's video he simply enables Local Area Connection 2, but when I tried this I still wasn't able to get a connection from within the VPC. I had to disable Local Area Connection 1.

Lachlan also advises not to leave the connection enabled unless you need it, as you'll take a performance hit if you do.

At this point you should be able to open Internet Explorer and get to the internet. You can start up one of the Office applications and step through the activation screen. In my case, I used our firm's MSDN license for Office.