First, I've been doing searches most of the day on this without luck.
In 2010 I bought Windows 7 Pro (downloadable) that consisted of three files - an executable and two .box files. Running the executable created a sub-directory called "expandedSetup" from the .box files. This directory contains all the files of the .box files to include a setup.exe. I installed this on a test machine without issue. In trying to create a Windows Pro VM (since I can't directly run the setup.exe), I used MagicISO to create an ISO of the contents of the "expandedSetup" directory. When I select the file in VMware, it recognizes that it is Windows 7 Pro; however, after going through the initial VMware setup requirements, VMware tries to run the image and comes back with "Operating System not found". And that's my problem.
I have three Linux VMs on the same machine so am not new to creating VMs with ISO files. I am, however, new to creating a Windows VM and didn't think I would have an issue. Does anyone have any suggestions or a solution? I also tried creating a VM without the OS thinking I could transfer the contents of the "expandedSetup" directory to the 60GB drive and then manually run setup.exe. However, I've never done that and can't seem to find a way to do it.
I'm running VMware Workstation 9.0.3 build-1410761 running on a laptop running Windows 7 Ultimate, 64-bit. The laptop has 32GB of RAM, 1.5TB of RAID 0 storage, and two nVidia GeForce GTX780M graphics cards in SLI configuration (4GB). So resources are not an issue.
In advance, thank you!