Coldclone does not see netword card

VMware Cloud Community

Hi,

It seems there is no recent version of the coldclone iso for vSphere 4.1 yet. Also the converter 4.3 is only distributed as a Windows installer. I had to download the one that came with 4.0 update 2. However, when booting with that CD on my HP Proliant DL380 G6 it claims it cannot find any network card.

As this CD is a preconfigured winPE environment I don't know how to add a network driver. Is there a more recent version of this CD or do I need to figure out how to build my own with the proper drivers? Althoud I have SOME experience in building a BartPE disk, it has been a while.

Bonno Bloksma

1 Solution

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Today I went to convert a HP DL380 G6 server using the VMware Converter Boot CD and the process failed because no network drivers were available. I discovered you can use the peTool.exe file contained in the downloaded .zip file for VMware Converter to add drivers to the .iso image. The process for performing this function follow.

Download (or locate) the VMware-convertercd-4.1.1-206170.zip file from VMWare
Once downloaded the .zip file contains the following:
coldclone.iso
EULA.rtf
open_source_licenses.txt
peTool.exe

The peTool.exe file is used to add software and drivers to the coldclone.iso image. Please note that the VMware Converter Boot CD is Windows Server 2003 32-bit based, so any drivers or software you add will need to be based on this OS.

In order to slipstream the drivers for the DL380 G6 server I downloaded the executable containing the drivers from HP's site and unpacked them to my C: drive. Once unpacked I took the folder labeled win2003, changed the characters to upper case (requirement for peTool), and placed the folder here: C:\Burn\WIN2003. Then I downloaded the VMware Converter Boot CD .zip file from VMware and unpacked those files to my C: drive as well. Next I opened a command prompt, navigated to the folder containing the coldclone.iso image and the peTool.exe and ran the following command:

petool -i coldclone.iso -n C:\Burn\WIN2003

When I booted the DL380 G6 server off of this new CD it booted properly and the network was available.

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8 Replies

you can use petool.exe to add additional drivers into the coldclone.iso

http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1012947

...or as I do, I use Magic ISO, find the correct NIC drivers and inject them into the system32\drivers folder.

Hi Troy,

The kb article does not mention for which OS I need the drivers. A Windows PE disk can be based on Windows XP (server 2003), Vista (server 2008)or 7 (server 2008R2) and can be either 32- or 64-bit.

Do you know which drivers I need?

you will need the drivers for the DL380 NICs.

Also, check out http://www.sanbarrow.com/ where you can build your own boot CD.

Watch this video - http://sanbarrow.com/moa241/videos/moa241-setup.html

building a custom coldcloneCD is really easy.

With a MOA CD you can load a missing driver after boot easily.

For worst case scenarios you buy a USB-networkcard and add the driver to MOA - then such scenarios like you have now will be business as usual

I am also quite helpful ... hmmm . ... well most of the times

http://sanbarrow.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1544

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Do you need support with a VMFS recovery problem ? - send a message via skype "sanbarrow"
I do not support Workstation 16 at this time ...

I might build a MOA CD in the near future. For now we solved it by adding an extra network card that needed to be in the server at a later moment anyway. That card was Intel based and the drivers were in the old ColdClone CD.

I sure hope VMware will realease a new ColdClone with updated software and drivers soon for others that are not as savy with creating a WinPE boot CD.

Bonno

I sure hope VMware will realease a new ColdClone

I seriously doubt so ...

- none of the recent versions has the -boot switch for converter.exe

- hot-clones are advertised as the way to go ...

- also to create a decent coldclone Cd IMHO more files are required then the PE eula allows

Just pick a very simple example.

In a coldclone CD you need a devicemanager to be able to install drivers after boot.

Having to remaster the CD to add a missing driver is ridiculous for a Tool which by its intended usage has to be able to handle unknown hardware during every use-case.

The PE Eula says that adding devicemanager is not allowed if you want to redistribute the PE. So VMware can not add it. Catch 22

I bet they just gave up when they realized that simply adding Converter to a MS-allowed PE does not make it

(just kidding)

If you create the tool yourself you can add what you need - and so of course a selfmade tool has a devicemanager.

I use a MOA-USB-disk for P2V.

I would not want to miss the Viclient - to be able to talk to the ESX before uploading something.

When I come to a system where I do not have the network driver I can start a tool that picks the missing driver out of the installed system.

If I convert something to a local target I can test the results imediatly by starting the imported VM in VMware Workstation which is also part of my P2V-USBdisk.

Watching youtube videos while converter grabs the p2v-candidate and stores it directly on your usb-disk which you also used for booting is really very convenient

No company in the world could market a CD or USB-disk like that - so you have to make it yourself

Give it a try - with the new installer it needs no special skills anymore to get started

Ulli

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