Converted NICs

[GarthDK]

I just converted a fairly large Win2003 server and all seemed to go well (eight hours to convert, multiple drives, multiple shares...). However, after powering off the old physical and powering up the new virtual, when I assigned the fixed IP address to the new VMNet NIC to match what was on the old box, it complained about that IP address already being assigned to an invisible NIC that I couldn't see. It allowed me to force the issue and all seems to be working fine.

Here's my Q: when converting a physical box to ESXi 4.0.1, should I tell Convertor to ignore the physical NICs and then add the new VNNet NICs once the box is converted? Will this avoid the prob I described above?

Thanx,

Garth

[MattG]

No, you did nothing wrong. This is a very common issue:

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=101416...

-MattG

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[Troy_Clavell]

...and to take it a little further. You should uninstall anything in device manager that is grayed out, after you install the guest tools and upgrade the virtual hardware.

[GarthDK]

Thanx to you both. I'll follow the VMware KB and see what happens. As to "greyed out", no NICs show up that way but that may change after I follow the KB article.

Thanx again,

Garth

[MattG]

You have to follow the steps as laid out in the KB, including executing the start devmgmt.msc from the command line. Otherwise you will not see what you are looking for.

-MattG

[GarthDK]

I did the steps to view the unconnected devices and there are a lot of them! Almost every category has at least one nonexistant device. Even the Processors category has them since I dropped the number of CPUs from eight to one. Are you saying that I should go thru each category and delete all of the greyed-out components?

Thanx,

Garth

[MattG]

You can, but it is not necessary. The NIC is the only one that causes an issue with the duplicate IP warning.

-MattG

[GarthDK]

Sounds good. I'm not too keen on uninstalling every one of those greyed-out components.

Thanx again,

Garth