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ETSMTL
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AMD Phenom X4 Black Edition & Initialization of vmkernel failed

Hello,

I have upgrade from AMD Opteron 1210 to AMD Phenom X4 9950 Black Edition and since this time I have the error 0xbad001e on vmkernel

I use ESX3.5 Update 3 with latest patch (november 6 2008)

I try to add /vmkernel/checkCPUIDLimit = "FALSE" to /etc/vmware/esx.conf with same result.

HARDWARE:

ASUS M2N-LR, Adaptec 19160 with 5 ultra160 drives, 8GB RAM.

BIOS: All default values.

dmesg :

TSC : 74724 cpu0:0)ALERT : CPUAMD: 450: Please use microcode patch level 0x01000065 or higher with AMD Family 10h B3 processors.

TSC : 101911 cpu0:0)ALERT : Init: 391: Unsupported microcode level 0x00000000 Please use microcode patch level 0x01000065 or higher with AMD Family 10h B3 processors.

Any other direction?

Message was edited by: ETSMTL

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stevefu
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Larstr,

Our boards (Asus M2N-LR) BIOS is currently at 0512, however i've been in contact with ASUS to see if they could update the BIOS to include the microcode patch and they now have a 0515 BIOS that is available from their website (may be of use to ETSMTL as you have the same board & issue as us, although a different processor and version of ESX)

however on trying this BIOS on our board we can see the microcode being applied and ESX3.5i now goes further along the install without complaining about a microcode issue, but freezes during the last stages of the install (or on attempting to start ESX if an install has previously been done with the 4200+ processor that works).

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Dave_Mishchenko
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Welcome to the VMware Community forums. Your post has been moved to the VI: ESX 3.5 forum.

Dave Mishchenko

VMware Communities User Moderator

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stevefu
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we have the same issue with a Phenom 9750 and the M2N-LR board. It works fine with a Dual core 4200+.

Is it that the bios doesn't have the correct microcode to pass to ESX or is it a change that can be done in ESX to get this working????

Can anyone answer this question and provide a fix?

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larstr
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I had the same issue today on a Barcelona system (X3755 7163) on 3.5u3 that has been running esx and hosting VMs for a few weeks.

Re-applying the latest firmwares with UXSPI was the solution, but I don't fully understand why.

Lars

stevefu
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Larstr,

Our boards (Asus M2N-LR) BIOS is currently at 0512, however i've been in contact with ASUS to see if they could update the BIOS to include the microcode patch and they now have a 0515 BIOS that is available from their website (may be of use to ETSMTL as you have the same board & issue as us, although a different processor and version of ESX)

however on trying this BIOS on our board we can see the microcode being applied and ESX3.5i now goes further along the install without complaining about a microcode issue, but freezes during the last stages of the install (or on attempting to start ESX if an install has previously been done with the 4200+ processor that works).

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ETSMTL
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Thanks to stevefu and ASUS to fix problem with BIOS 515.

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stevefu
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ETSMTL,

Can you confirm if the new BIOS works with your configuration, as we are using a 9750 processor and ESX3.5i and I see you are using a 9950 and ESX3.5 ?

If it does we will try the full ESX3.5 version first before trying a different processor. :smileygrin:

regards

Steve

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ETSMTL
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I confirm that the new BIOS 0515 for ASUS M2N-LR motherboard fix the problem "Initialization of vmkernal failed" with AMD Phenom X4 9950 Black Edition processor on VMware ESX 3.5 update 3 with patches from december 02 2008.

Steve, have you install ESXe350-200811401-O-SG - PATCH on your ESX3.5i??? It's the lastest patch (12/02/2008) from VMware for ESX3.5i

regards

ETSMTL

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ian_fretwell
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As a colleague of Steve I can confirm that the ESXi installs we have are fully patched up to date. This is particularly annoying since we initially had the 'full' ESX installed rather than ESXi but chnaged to that in the hope that it would provide the fix for us - that's when we hit upon the microcode error.

When discussing this with Asus they kept referring to their inability to receive 'the driver of vmware' - I could get no further information regarding exactly what 'driver' they were referring to but at least we got them to sort the microcode update out.

Ian.

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stevefu
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ETSML,

Thanks for the confirmation. At least we now know that it works on the full version of ESX3.5U3... I'm not sure why the same setup but using ESX3.5iU3 with the latest patches doesn't work? I wonder if it will be fixed in the next round of ESX patches that hopefully will be with us soon.

At least we know that we can get Quad core working on our board with the full version of 3.5.

I wonder if someone from VMWare can shed any light as to why it works fine on 3.5U3, but not on 3.5iU3?

Thanks once again for the confirmation ETSML .

regards

Steve

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Bump06
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I hope someone can help give me some ideas on my Phenom 9600 CPU as I too am getting the unsupported CPU error 0xbad001e. One of the first changes I tried was the/vmkernel/checkCPUIDLimit = "FALSE" setting and I was still getting the same error.

I am using an ASUS M3A-H motherboard and have updated to bios 1301.

SCSI Adaptec 2410SA Controller

Intel e1000 Controller

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stevefu
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I wonder if VMware have tightened up on what hardware will run under 3i as apposed to the full paid for version of ESX? as it will run (assumin your bios supports it) under the full version.

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Bump06
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Sorry, I forgot to mention that i am running 3.5 Update 3 build

123630. That is whats so wierd as I am running the full version and I

still get the error. How were you able to see the microcode error?

Thanks

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stevefu
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We're running 3i on an ASUS M2-LNR board. When trying to run with a quad core CPU it would display the microcode error and not boot.

After a lot of emails with ASUS, I managed to get themt o update the BIOS to include the patch for the microcode. It still wouldn't work on 3i, but another guy in this thread has the same setup as us but is using full 3.5 and once he got hold of the new BIOS it booted fine.

I'd email ASUS for a BIOS fix.

Regards

Steve

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mhuang18
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I'm new to WMWARE, I am using m2n-lr motherboard and having message "Mounting root failed dropping into basic maintenance shell

To collect logs for vmware ,connect a usb storage device and run’bin/vm-support<devicename>’

Machine will be rebooted when you exit from this shell

Busybox v0.60.5( 2007.10.10-06:90+0000) built in shell(ash)" Can you guys help me how to troubleshoot and get it to work? thanks

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Bump06
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Well, here is an update. I ended up going back to Update 1 since my last post and have been running fine for the most part. I did have a few lockups within the first week and I continue to get APIC errors and after a few more bios tweaks, I have been stable ever since. In the bios I disabled USB 2.0 support, disabled APIC support and changed the suspend mode to S1. I have been running 4 instances of a Prime Test effectively keeping all 4 cores at 50% for the past two weeks with no lockups.

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