I also recently added the solar sensor to my VP2 station. In my case, I did not need any reset, nor did I take the station offline....just plugged in the new sensor and it started receiving data from it.
VirtualVP is well worth it; it works well for me even inside of a virtual operating system machine (under VMWare). The virtual serial driver that VirtualVP requires is a free download; link and details are provided with VirtualVP. Once you get VirtualVP, check out VPLive (free). I use VPLive to keep the station clock synced to my PC's clock, since my PC's are synced directly to an atomic clock source.