Jeff, in reference to your comment about vmware costing money…how much is your Technet subscription?? (vmware is only 190 bucks…)
If VMWare is so fantastic how come it fails to run on 3 of my 4 machines?
I keep trying but all I get when opening https://connect.microsoft.com/ is a dns error. 
will have to find another connection to play on.
The hardest part I have found has been installing XP. despite forking out for two full copies of xp at about 150 each (one of which I can no longer use because the laptop has died) i found out that they were only oem versions which means I have had to resort to google. licensing is definately an issue with vm.