Convert Windows NT 4 SP6 BDC

[mennuni]

Hi,

I have problems converting a Windows NT SP6, it's a BDC.

The task stops at 2% with these messages:

03:06:47 PM Taking a snapshot of the volume...

03:06:47 PM ERROR: Failed to take snapshot of a source volume.

Possible causes include not having any NTFS volumes on Windows XP or Windows 2003 source systems,

and not having enough free disk space.

It fails converting local and remote. I tried to deselect all the partitions except C:\.

The converter client said

Task failed: P2VError SNAPSHOT_FAILURE(-1)

The converter agent said more, some messages:

IOCTL_GET_STORAGE_DEVICE_NUMBER for volume C: is not supported .... Trying NT method.

Windisk_GetVolumeDiskExtents failed with error 1

GetVolumeAttributes: failed to get WUID of attVol=\{computer=,1} : sysimage.fault.PlatformError

stcbasic.sys not installed or snapshot creation failed. err=5

Image processing task has failed with MethodFault::Exception: sysimage.fault.SnapshotError

[esiebert7625]

Did you reboot after installing Converter on the server? Are you running Converter as a Local Admin? How much disk pace do you have free on your C drive? Are you mirroring through the OS at all?

[mennuni]

Yes, I have rebooted and I'm using a Domain Admin user.

I have ~750MB free on the C:\ partition.

I forgot to specify that the system has 4 raid volume, all HW.

C:\ (source) is a partition on a mirrored volume and E:\ (destination) is on a striped volume.

[esiebert7625]

It's usually best to use a Local admin instead of a Domain admin, hardware mirroring is OK since the OS does not know about it. 750MB might not be enough, I'd try freeing up some more space and using Local admin.

[mennuni]

I can use only domain admin users because it's a NT BDC.

About freeing space, I moved all the possible. Tonight I will move the pagefile, if I can reboot the machine.

Somewhere I read that the minimum free space is ~200 MB.

[mennuni]

It's not a space problem, nor a destination problem.

I moved the pagefile and now I have 2,7 GB free on C:. I tried also to make the virtual machine on D:, a different raid volume (the same of C:).

The conversion continue to fail

[esiebert7625]

Do you have the Enterprise version of Converter, if so I would try a cold clone from the boot ISO, you need at least 264MB of memory for cold-cloning. Does your domain admin user have full rights to the C drive? Is your file system NTFS or FAT32? Also the requirement is for NT SP6a and you are running SP6, I'm not sure if that will matter or not.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/241211

[mennuni]

The filesystem is NTFS and the SP6a is installed.

About the permission, I think it's not the problem, because the task stop at 2%, before reading the disk contents. However, the user belongs to the Administrators group, so I think it has full rights.

We don't have an Enterprise version, but we can't make a cold colone for the service continuity.

[wolfiko]

I have the same problem on a windows 2000 SP4 Domain Controler. It convertet with converter version 3.0.0 but the resulting vm did not boot. Now Version 3.0.1 does not even convert the machine, but gives me error: sysimage.fault.SnapshotError

[Gambelore]

I think the problem might be due to your RAID configuration.

Converter does not import Windows NT 4 with mirrored/striped volumes

Converter is unable to recognize logical devices in Windows NT 4 that span multiple drives. This includes striped and mirrored volumes.

Taken from the release notes at

http://www.vmware.com/support/converter/doc/releasenotes_conv301.html#mgprod

[ufritsch]

Hi, i had the same problem, please try to stop ALL disk-accessing tasks such as WINS , Virus agents etc.

[digitalex]

Converter 3.0.3 fixes these problems. Hot clone of NT 4.0. The only way to do a BDC is hot clone but I would recommend not doing a domain controller hot. Also if you do a cold clone it will ask to convert the NTFS partition to a new windows 2000 supported partition. So it is also not recommended.

[TomHowarth]

By far the easist method would be to create a new BDC and then retire the old physical machine.

if you set on doing a convert and are using Software RAID in your machine and it is RAID 1 you could try breaking the mirror's, however I do not think this will work. a Cold clone of the machine will not understand the disk format of a software raided machine.

Therefore you must do a Hot Clone, which also has its issues for PDC/BDC and AD servers.

Tom Howarth

VMware Communities User Moderator