This probably belongs in the "really, really obvious" category - but since it is also really really useful, I'll blog it :-)
Installing BizTalk 2004 isn't just a "Double click setup.exe" job, so it's nice to create a Virtual Machine containing your one-stop dev environment, containing SQL, VS.NET, BTS, NUnit, and so on. It's also nice to be able to connect up to network resources such as Sourcesafe, the Internet, and so on.
Now, networks don't like multiple machines with the same name, so if two developers indiscriminately start up the VM with normal networking enabled, it causes problems. Renaming a BTS server is a whole world of pain, but luckily there's a far easier solution - simply configure Virtual PC to use "Shared Networking (NAT)". This sets up a virtual NAT with your host machine as the gateway, meaning the network can't see your VM but your VM can see the network
To access your main network resources, you then have two options:
1) Using the "Local Users and Groups" MMC snapin, create an account on your guest OS with the same account name and password as your main domain account. As long as you keep the passwords in sync, you will be able to use domain-authenticated resources (such as Sourcesafe) without any further authentication just by logging in to your VM as that user. (For a discussion of why, see Keith Brown's excellent "Programming Windows Security" book).
Or
2) If you don't want to set up a local account, you can authenticate yourself to any server by doing the following:
- From a command prompt, type net use \\<servername>\ipc$ /user:<your domain name>\<your user name>
- Enter your password when prompted
- You are now domain-authenticated on that server.
If you use this method to connect to your SourceSafe sever then when you run sourcesafe you will be asked for your username. Just enter your network login name (eg 'dotnetdunk') and you can use SourceSafe as normal.
Personally, I prefer option 1 ;-)