With SharePoint 2010 almost out, I started building a new development server using VMWare Server 2.0 running on a Windows 2008 R2 host. The details of the build will be posted on here later.
However, one of the biggest problems I faced was getting software installed on the guests. Currently I am trying to install SQL Server 2008 which was take an extrodinary longtime to install, so much so that I thought it was hanging. Eventually I decided to copy over the setup files to the guest machine. Originally the installer had been run from a share on the host, it was only when I started the copy did the problem become apparent.

The file copy speed was 10kb/s!! Obviously this is rather slow and I started to do some investigation.

There were a number of posts relating to TCP Offloading on the VMWare site however the fixes had no effect. I was disabling the TCP offloading within the guest on the Intel Pro e1000 driver.

However, it was this set of posts which lead me to solving the problem:
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/winserverhyperv/thread/bdc40358-45c8-4c4b-883b-a695f382e01a

Basically rather than disabling it on the guest you need to disable it on the host. My guest machines are all setup to use bridged networking so I disabled the TCP Offloading / Large Send Offloading (v4) for the Realtek device using Start->Network->Network and Sharing Centre. Click on the Local Network Connection->Properties->Configure (under network adapter)->Advanced->Large Send Offloading (v4) = Disabled.

Anyway hope that helps anyone else who is experiencing similar problems.

Whilst I write this post the SQL Server setup files have copied over in less than 10 mins (instead of 3 to 4 hours hurrah!)