If i'm not mistaken, VT support is not needed to run ESXi and definitely isn't needed on ESX - which if I may add, ran fine on this CPU/machine model.

I am currently running with the precision 490 on esx 3.5i as well as 3.5 for testing purpose. I will say the config different I had with you is, I am using the Xeon processor which is same with the server processor on PE 2950. For memory I am using 16GB ECC servers memory. I am running my environment without raid and only SATA DISK. Everything is working accordingly.

Malaysia VMware Communities - http://www.malaysiavm.com

I am using the usb key to install.

Always response "Unable to find a supported device to write the vmware esx server 3i 3.5.0 image to."

My T3400 BIOS Version is A07

And you?

And everyone error log with me the same?

andy1121:
Remember to NOT use RAID or AHCI for your drives, only ATA mode will work.

Jeff Elben: Thanks for that USB boot method. That should help out a bunch of people, since technically that method should work the same as PXE, since it's not using anything on that ATA/SATA bus. Rather an odd problem to say the least. Maybe some sort of IRQ conflict or somesuch between the CD drive and HDD. shrug

And yes, USB would be faster and much easier to set up!

FWIW -

I've recently setup VMware ESX Server 3i build-123629 (Update 3) on both a Dell Precision T3400 and a Precision 390 BIOS version 2.6.0 (05/19/08)

Seagate ST3160815AS Sata 160GB HD

In the BIOS I set SATA Operation to "RAID Autodetect / AHCI".

It was set to "RAID Autodetect / ATA" and there is also the option for "RAID". I tried the ATA and got the no disk found message during installation.

The CD did work fine in both cases and was able to run the installer all the way up to the disk detection point.

It is working fine on the Net with the on board Broadcom GigE NIC too BTW.

This is the ISO file I downloaded to run install these servers.

VMware ESX Server 3i U3 Installable Refresh
Version 3.5 Update 3 | 123629
- 11/06/08
241 MB
Binary (.iso)
md5sum: 444e1f57d1bc2296391b74e9ee406acb(¹)

https://www.vmware.com/tryvmware/p/download.php?p=esxi&a=DOWNLOAD_FILE&baseurl=http://download2.vmware.com/software/vi/&filename=VMware-VMvisor-InstallerCD-3.5.0_Update_3-123629.i386.iso

Hope that helps some of you out there...

I was able to find a solution to getting VMWare ESXi version 4.0 installed on a Dell Precision T3400 system & support 64 Bit Virtual Machines. I did not have any problems installing ESXi on the system once I changed the SATA settings to be RAID with ATA functionality if there are not any active RAID drives. I did have problems trying to set up 64 bit VM's on this system though. After reading articles, I determined that it was my processor series that I had installed on my T3400 system. When we purchased the T3400, we selected a low end processor for this system. We had the Intel Core 2 Duo E4600 series processor. You would want to compare your processor with what Intel shows as having the virtualization functionality built into it. The Intel article can be located at http://www.intel.com/products/processor/core2duo/specifications.htm?iid=prod_core2duo+tab_spec for Core 2 Duo processors. Core 2 Quad processors can be located at http://www.intel.com/products/processor/core2quad/specifications.htm.

I replaced the processor with an Intel Core 2 Duo 6300 series process running at 1.86 GHz. The 6300 series does have the Intel Virtualization Technology (VT) functionality. Once I installed the 6300 series processor, I looked in the BIOS. In the Performance tab, there was a new option available for Virtualization. I enabled that feature & then performed a clean install of VMWare ESXi 4.0 on the system.

After finishing the setup, I then started a VMWare convert to move a 64 Bit virtual machine onto the T3400 system. It finally accepted the T3400 as an acceptable location for 64 Bit virtual machines. Prior to processor replacement and SATA changes in the BIOS, I could not perform a VMWare convert targeting the T3400 system. Every time that I tried to select the T3400 system, VMWare convert would come back saying that the T3400 does not support 64 Bit virtual machines.