VMTN

Worked great for me as well!  One question, did you go ahead and install VMware tools to get all drivers loaded, or did you leave them off?

Doesn't work for me ...

I get following BSOD message:

SYSTEM_THREAD_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED

No tools installed and i also tried it with the rom file from the vmware player ...

Can you post your vmware.log file?

The log...

thx 4 your time

This is a shot in the dark, but try changing "usb.present" to TRUE in the .vmx file.

no change  :-(

Ra2707,

I really have not seen much discussion about the things that you have tried or much about how you set up the VM.

Or if you receive this error before or after OS install.

There is plenty on Google about this error poping up after OS install dealing with memory/driver problems

I am using Virtual Machine Version: 7

Both Memory/CPU Hotplug is disabled

Video RAM is set to 128MB (This setting would not matter but I like to give more than the standard video memory)

LSI Logic SAS SCSI Controller

E1000 Network

General Options -> OS type set to 2008R2 64Bit (I am running Server 2012 the server version of Windows 8)

I know you are using build 8000380 but are you using ESX or ESXi, from the log file it shows "VMware ESX"?

I would re-create your vm with hotplug disabled with a similar config as above, ignoring the video ram stuff that I did.

Please post results.

If problems detail what you have tried.

thx

Que2

BTW: I also have the BIOS file I use in the VM directory so I do not have to set special paths.

Que2,

after some tests these are my results with my ESXi 4.1 U3 installation:

The problem was the hardware:

     Asus P8P67 Pro (P67 Express Chipset)  with a intel i5-3570K or i5-3470S cpu didn't work with Win8, but with all other systems.

     A BIOS update and playing with all the BIOS settings didn't solve my problem.

With my Asus Maximus V Gene (Intel® Z77 Express Chipset) the EXSi could not find the vmfs volumes, but this is a other problem.

What worked with Windows 8 Pro was a old Asus P7P55D-E motherboard ...

thx for your help.

br

Yes. This solution also worked for me, but can't seem to get VMTools installed on it. Any suggestions?

jmattson,

This works perfectly for Windows Server 2012!

Do you know if there would be a problem installing the ESX 4.1 VMware Tools on the Windows Server 2012 virtual machine running on ESXi 4.1 with your configuration?

I do not believe that ESXi 4.1 has VMware Tools for Windows 8/Windows Server 2012.  You are welcome to experiment with VMware Tools for an earlier version of Windows, but please note that this configuration is not supported by VMware, with or without Tools.

For getting Windows 8 to boot and operate in ESX 4.1,

I used jmattson's bios.rom file and updated my .vmx file. That worked fine for me.

Then For Installing VMTools on my Windows 8 VMs, I used this kb article for the VGA black screen issues.

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1011709

Just on setup, I chose Custom rather than Typical setup, and was able to disable the VMTools VGA driver.

Presto! Windows 8 now works in ESX 4.1 with VMTools.

Joy!

Is there any information around what the changes were in the ROM?

Michael F wrote:

 

Is there any information around what the changes were in the ROM?

It's been a while, but I'm pretty sure this was the ROM from Workstation 9.  There are instructions for extracting the BIOS ROM file in this thread: VMware BIOS modification - for Linux users, for those who are uncomfortable installing a BIOS ROM image of unknown provenance.

Note that this configuration is entirely unsupported, no matter where you get your ROM image.

Does anyone know if this same file, bios.440.rom, will work for Windows Server 2012 in ESX 4.1? I tried it a few times today with no luck. I was just curious if a whole new bios file had to be written for this OS too... or if the Windows 8 file should work.

I get the same HAL error too by the way. As the Windows 8 machines give.