BSOD on bootcamp startup

[vastslug]

Hi All,

We deploy winXP to our bootcamp partitions using Winclone to deploy a sysprep-ed image containing the bootcamp 1.4 beta drivers.

When using VMware Fusion to boot the bootcamp partition we get the blue screen of death (before login screen). As a result we can't boot XP out of vmware...

Ideas anyone? I have also tried the 1.1 beta with no effect.

Test machines, Imac 5,1 Imac 7,1 MacPro, MacbookPro

BSOD info: Stop: 0x0000007B (0XF8AA7524, 0xc00000034,0x00000000,0x00000000)

If we do a manual install of XP and drivers VMWare works fine.

[admin]

Did preprocessing work? When you do a manual install, do you mean a manual Boot Camp install?

[vastslug]

Preprocessing seemed to work (no errors).

I do mean a manual boot camp install.

I just moved the ~/Library/Application Support/VMware folder and launched the bootcamp image again and I saw a preprocessing error something about copying a file (drigger happy on the mouse). I then launched the bootcamp image again and it's been on the VMware Fusion is preperaing your boot camp patition.... for about 15 mins now. I'm guessing this will not get me anywhere.

Any Ideas?

[admin]

The manual boot camp install working vs sysprep'd image not working suggests something is wrong with the sysprep image - once the data's on the partition, Fusion doesn't know which method you used, right?

What's in the naos vmware.log file?

[vastslug]

Here is the log file (attached).

Are there any other log files?

Do you need to see the log file while VM is preparing the partition also? - i'l' get xp imaging again....

I'm actually going through the Windows Sysprep stage before trying Fusion.. Not sure if that makes a difference...

[admin]

That's the UI log, I'm interested in the helper VM (naos)'s log. See and .

[vastslug]

I think thats the one you mean (attached)..

Sorry - not had time to read all the documents

[admin]

The important part is:

Nov 02 16:18:00.712: vcpu-0| Guest: 100 reconfig : reconfigure.sh v1.04

Nov 02 16:18:00.814: vcpu-0| Guest: 400 reconfig : FAILED: cannot determine which partition has the Windows disk

Output of "sudo fdisk /dev/rdisk0" (or whichever disk your Boot Camp partition is on)?

[vastslug]

See attached - it didn't paste well

Thats the same as another test machine with the problem.

Are we getting somewhere?

I'm off home now but can VPN and test if required (if my wife lets me).

[jim_gill]

I don't know if we've tested against a sysprepped XP install. If you've started it up in native mode (under Apple's Boot Camp) then sysprep will have completed its work and the system is no different than one you'd installed interactively.

Two reasons that preprocessing can fail as we see here are a system that has not shut down cleanly (if the NTFS dirty bit is set, we dare not touch the disk outside Windows) and a system disk volume partitioned with FAT16. It's unlikely that an XP partition is formatted with 16-bit FAT, but has the problem occurred after you've run your Boot Camp partition natively, and cleanly booted restarted back into OS X? The "Startup disk" Control Panel applet installed by Apple's Boot Camp drivers works well for that, as will the Start Menu | Shut Down | Hold-Option-key-while-starting method.

The preprocessing that Fusion does simply extracts two drivers that ship with Windows and updates the registry to run them. If we aren't able to do that through preprocessing, it can be accomplished from within Windows itself. While Windows is running under Boot Camp, do this:

1) Extract the files intelide.sys and i8042prt.sys from c:\Windows\Driver Cache\i386\sp2.cab. Recent versions of WinZip can open cab files, and this is the easiest method. If you don't have WinZip, open a command prompt, cd to the \Windows\Driver Cache\i386 folder, and use the Microsoft expand program:

c:\Windows\Driver Cache\i386> expand sp2.cab -F:intelide.sys .

c:\Windows\Driver Cache\i386> expand sp2.cab -Fi8042prt.sys .

2) Copy the two files (intelide.sys and i8042prt.sys) into your \Windows\system32\drivers folder.

3) Download the attached 'bootcamp.reg.zip' file which updates the Windows registry to add references to the IDE, mouse, and keyboard required for the virtual hardware.

4) Unzip the attachment, then double click on the 'bootcamp.reg' file.

5) When asked to "Are you sure you want to add the information in C:(path to file) to the registry?", click Yes.

5) If successfully added, the Windows Registry Editor will say "Information in C:(path to file) has been successfully entered into the registry." and click OK.

6) Restart the computer and boot off the Mac partition.

7) Launch VMware Fusion and open your Boot Camp partition virtual machine, which should no longer blue screen or have issues with the keyboard or mouse.

[vastslug]

Cheers for that,

I'll try tomorrow. I did try bootcamp.reg.zip but without the intelide.sys and Fi8042prt.sys files...

I'll report back ether way

[jim_gill]

Just to avoid a mistake: the name of the keyboard/mouse driver is "i8042prt.sys", not "Fi8042prt.sys". The leading F is just part of the syntax for using Microsoft's expand utility to get the driver out of the .cab archive, and it stands for "file to extract."

[vastslug]

That solution did not work for us... Cheers anyway Jim.gill

Etung.... Any ideas?

[vastslug]

Sorted - I think... running a test as we speak.

In the config file for the boot camp VM (Boot Camp parition.vmx) I set the setting scsi0.present to "FALSE" it was set to "TRUE"...

[vastslug]

Yeah works on all of our test lab machines...

[admin]

Can you be more specific about the change (.e.g. in your vmx file, what is scsi0)? What made you think of this change?

[jim_gill]

The Boot Camp partition and VM should be using IDE drives, not SCSI (all the Macs have SATA drives, and the Boot Camp virtual machine talks to the physical drive). It sounds like things are working for you but I'm very curious about how a scsi0:n.present = "TRUE" line got into your .vmx file. Had you updated it from some external tool?

[vastslug]

We had issues with VMware workstation running in windows a while back with our corporate XP image. It turned out for some reason (on any hardware we tested) VMware workstation would set scsi0.present to be enabled even though we specified IDE in the VM settings...

Anyway while I was investigating the vmx file this morning I notice the same setting so thought I would change it to FALSE as Jim.gill says Boot Camp should be using IDE drivers.... Luckily this worked and I successfully replicated this on several test machines.

"Had you updated it from some external tool?" - no

I'm think that the Preprocessing stage with Fusion setting up the boot camp partition doesn't like the way we (and many others) deploy XP to the Mac and just enables scsi? partition table issues maybe? - It's a dodgy theory...

I have asked a friend in another company (with the same issue as I had) to test this solution and he got back to me saying it seems to be working for him.. He did say he wanted to do it a second time to be sure tomorrow though

[admin]

So were there any other scsi0 entries? Basically we want to figure out where these came from and why. Attach the .vmx?

[vastslug]

3rd or 4th line down..

That was the only scsi reference.