Well, setting up a image for SRV 2008 & trying to install exchange 2007. added the role for AD Domain Services. how should i deal with dcpromo & the issue of naming the domain... since it is a test lab and i do not need to control a domain so when entering something like test.lab23.com or any non registered real domain will produce errors down the line with the dns servers.

any help will help, thx

When building a lab that will not be accessible anywhere but in the virtual network, I tend to use any old domain name. You will get errors about DNS delegation, but that isn't an issue when setting up a DC on an isolated network and you can click "Yes" to continue. For my DCs in test labs, I usually install DHCP, DNS, and AD DS, and then run dcpromo (saving the configuration log on the first run, so I can re-use it every other time I rebuild the domain). Again, if you have an isolated network, you will get one DNS delegation error on dcpromo, but it can be safely ignored.