The demo failed.

Of course it did. Demos always fail. That is the nature of demos. I've never been more confident going into a demo that everything was going to go fine, only to have the whole thing blow up in my face when my wireless router stopped being recognized by my laptop.

Anyway, the bottom line on giving demos using the desktop as well as Virtual PC machines: install the Microsoft loopback adapter. Give it a static IP address, and give your VPCs static IPs in the same subnet. Then you don't even need to fool Windows that there is a network connection. Otherwise "media sense" will keep you from being able to communicate with the VPCs, as happened in my demo. Don't let bad demos happen to you!

Edited the next day... Perhaps I was too hard on myself when I say the demo failed. It didn't fail, but it didn't work the way it was supposed to either. I was able to get across the point of the demo. However by having a glitch in the middle, I'm sure I didn't win over any customers.