Disconnected Cable and New Network layer

[Dest]

Here is something I'm running into and open to ideas around it...

In my environment, my Host OS (Vista 64bit) runs MS SQL and a few other "server" applications. My guests (Windows 2003) connect to these for their day-to-day processing.

Prior to the current version my setup had a single interface for each guest bridged together to my network card in HIF mode.

I had my network interface setup w/ an "Alternate configuration" and each Guest OS did too. This setup allowed that when in the office and plugged into the network, the guests were available on the network and when not plugged in, the "alternat config" picked up and they could still properly talk to the host. This worked because the "bridge" always had network connectivity.

With the new network configuration however, with no virtual adapters, the main network card stays in a "Disconnected Cable" mode as you would expect when there is no cable. The downside of this is my "Alternate configuration" never kicks in resulting in the guests being unable to talk to the host.

A "Loopback" adapter would probably work for internal purposes but would result in me needing to change the adapter the guest was configured to use when in the office.

Anyone have any ideas (short of downgrading) on a way to accomplish this w/ the newer interface

[Sasquatch]

You can still install that loopback adapter, and bridge it like you always have.

[Dest]

It could be a bug but i noticed when I bridged the interfaces, the bridge and the interfaces aren't available for selection.

I'll test it some more.

I ended up just using a loop back and i'll worry about correcting it back to how it was when I need that.