I have two development virtual machines with Windows 7 32 bit (SP1) on VirtualBox, with SQL Reporting Services (SQL 2012 Express) and IIS 7 installed. I am using some custom deployment scripts for rs.exe tool to deploy some test reports to SRSS.
Everything works fine when I run my virtual machines without closing them. But when I close a virtual machine with saving its state, and later start it again from the saved state, suddenly my report deployment scripts time out.
To test if Report Server is still running, I opened Internet Explorer (on one machine I have IE 8, and IE 9 on the other machine) and navigate to localhost/ReportServer.
IE could not connect, but still IE did not give up like it usually does when opening unresistant addresses. It just stopped forever spinning the Loading icon, so it seems it got some response and got stuck, the same way as my deployment script did.
But when I open localhost/ReportServer in Mozilla Firefox, it immediately asks for user credentials, I enter them, and the Report Server loads just fine!
This problem happens on both machines occasionally after starting them from the saved state. I really do not understand, why nor IE, nor my deployment script can connect to the localhost, but Firefox can.
I guess, there might be some service got stuck because of saving/restoring the virtual machine. I tried to restart ReportServer itself, but that did not help.
After 20 minutes or more, suddenly everything normalizes and localhost/ReportServer is available again from IE and my deployment scripts.
Also I notice the following: when restoring from saved state, Windows Taskbar behaves a bit strange - it shows empty bar (no icon) for every application I open, and after I close applications, that empty bar still stays there. But again after 20 minutes or so suddenly all those empty bars disappear and everything works normally. This happens on both virtual machines.
What's going on there? How do I restore Windows networking to normal operation after starting virtual machine from saved state?