This issue has plagued me for several months so I finally decided to do something about it.
Virtual PC 2007 used to work fine when the console was opened, all was well. Suddenly and without warning, I would launch Virtual PC and the Console would no longer appear.
The Console was still accessible via the system tray as shown below:
From here you can right click and use the console options. However the Console window is nowhere to be found.
I applied SP1 when it came out but this did not resolve the issue. I also tried reinstalling the software to no avail. Here is an interesting fact: I connected an external screen one day when I was working on presentations and low and behold! The console was there...
I was ecstatic! The next time I shut down the system and started it back up guess what? Lost again...
I started searching on this issue and located an article discussing a .NET issue and the options.xml file. I had a .NET issue as well in my event logs so I figured let's give this a shot.
I backed the file up first before making changes. Also, Virtual PC must be closed or you cannot save changes to options.xml.
In Vista, the file is located under: C:\users\%username%\appdata\roaming\Microsoft\Virtual PC\
Here is what I found:
So I modified the <left_position type = "integer"> to 10 as well as the <top_position type="integer"> to 10.
After saving the file, I started Virtual PC. Bingo! Problem solved.
Here is the latest options.xml file after moving the console around the screen a bit...
