Converter failing at 97%

[cmcfarlane]

I am new to the VM world and I am trying to convert a Windows 2000 Server running SP4. Everytime I try to to convert the server over it fails at 97%. I get a windows error that pops up telling me that my registry is too small, yet I have doubled the size of it. I have removed the mirrored drive from the system and shut down all but Microsoft services on the machine. I have upgraded the converter software to the 3.0.2 build 59994, but I keep having the same problem. Any help would be nice. I can upload a log file if needed.

[DMahalko]

I am also new to VMWare and I also had the coverter fail at 97% with a Registry Too Small message popup.

I have combatted this registry problem in the past. Basically the hundreds of Windows Updates over the years have led to massive fragmentation of the registry files. Increasing the maximum to about 200 meg will stave off the Too Small warning for a while, but the real problem is the fragmentation rather than it being too small.

You cannot fix this problem by running the standard Windows 2000 Disk Defragmenter. It cannot defrag system files that are in use, and the registry is always open and in use.

The solution (at least to the registry problem) is to install the SysInternals utility Page Defrag, which defragments all the registry hives during the system boot, before Windows has started up. Page Defrag is free, and available for download from Microsoft (they bought out SysInternals):

PageDefrag v2.32 - By Mark Russinovich

After installing it on this server and rebooting, during startup Page Defrag said that the SOFTWARE hive was in 270 fragments, and defragged it into 1.

I've seen the Registry Too Small message bubble across so many old Windows 2000 SP4 machines during Windows Update that I now install Page Defrag by default on all staff machines -- including XP now -- and have it always run at system boot to keep registry fragmentation under control.

-Dale

[DMahalko]

Followup to my Registry Too Small error:

- Defragmented page files and registry hives with Page Defrag

- Did the standard Windows Disk Defragment

VMWare Converter now finishes with 100% success, with no other changes to the system to be converted.

-Dale

[cmcfarlane]

Even after defrag it still fails at 97%. This kind of bums me out. All I hear about from VMware is how easy it is to convert servers over. Right now we are getting a failure rate of around 80% of our servers. So I don't know what to do.

[mcsooper]

I was having the same problem with 2 out of 3 severs I recently converted that had the same exact hardware and partitioning form the factory. The one 1 that didn't have a problem went from physical to GSX to ESX, the two that did went from physical to ESX.

After some trouble shooting I found that the E drive on the 2nd server I was converting was causing the problem, once I chose not to bring it over and chose only the C and F drive it converted without issue. The third server I ran into the same problem again when I chose not to convert the E drive it converted without issue. I would of tried converting the other two to GSX virst and then to ESX, but I didn't have the time or patience and luckily both servers E drives contained data that could easily be moved over to another drive.

I know that doesn't solve your issue, but hopefully it will give you some more info and options.

[cmcfarlane]

Did you bring the other driver over at a separate time? There are 2 harddrives and the D drive is the one with the most important data on.

[mcsooper]

No, on the first server with the issue I had one shared folder so I just recreated it on the F drive, and on the second server with the issue our consulting group had to redo everything on it anyways so after the first time it gave us a problem we just decided to do the C drive.

I believe the problem was with the fact that our E drive existed on an logical drive in an extended partition (the Dell factory did that, I have no idea why) while I F drive sat as a primary partition in it's raid volume. Is that the way your D drive is partition off?

[jayolsen]

I don't know if this will help your problem, but I have had to run chkdsk /f before on servers that failed during conversion. Afterwards they converted fine.

[cmcfarlane]

That is the way the drive is partitioned. However if I just try to do the c drive it still fails at 97%

[theanykey]

If you increased the registry size and you still see an error, it may be either because your pagefile is not on C drive or you have an extensive amount of free space on 1 of your selected parttions. You could try disabling the pagefile altogether. I would need to see the logs for a better analysis.

Can you post the logs?

To do so, simply open up your VMware Converter 3.0 application and choose

File --> Export Logs

[cmcfarlane]

Here is the last attempt that I made. I tried converting over to an external HD that I installed on the server. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[brent84]

Have you tried actually using the image it creates? Often they're repairable even though the conversion fails.

Try booting into windows, if it blue screens or has errors try running a repair using the Win2000 CD. This has worked for me in the past with a high success rate

Cheers,

Brent

[cmcfarlane]

I have tried using the image that it creates, but it fails with a blue screen. I can't repair the files because it says that it can't determine the guest operating system.

[theanykey]

Getting extended OS info by parsing boot.ini and/or analyzing the registry failed

Registering disposable session object id=localFile={
.\vstor2-p2v30-63F03B28007E00000000000005000000\msdos.sys}

Associating disposable session object id=localFile={
.\vstor2-p2v30-63F03B28007E00000000000005000000\msdos.sys} with session id=7DA8AFB6-3651-4C1A-A215-37EBE64CB304

Error

object explicitly disposed: localFile={
.\vstor2-p2v30-63F03B28007E00000000000005000000\msdos.sys}

msdos.sys is non-existent or inaccessible

FAILED parsing NTFS or Win9x_DOS partition

Make sure you are not choosing to automatically install vmware-tools. If you have not, then run converter's option "Configure Machine" and point it to this non-bootable VM.

If that doesnt fix it, please attach a screenshot of the BlueScreen

Please attach the vmdk file of this non-bootable VM to another windows VM. Now you can browse the files on the non-bootable VM. Look for the boot.ini and also grab the evt files from X:\WINNT\system32\config where X:\ is the new drive letter representing the "mounted" vmdk file of the non-bootable VM.

[Predicatore]

>Make sure you are not choosing to automatically install vmware-tools. If you have not, then run converter's option "Configure Machine" and point it to this non-bootable VM.

>

>If that doesnt fix it, please attach a screenshot of the BlueScreen

>

>Please attach the vmdk file of this non-bootable VM to another windows VM. Now you can browse the files on the non-bootable VM. Look for the boot.ini and also grab the evt files from X:\WINNT\system32\config where X:\ is the new drive letter representing the "mounted" vmdk file of the non-bootable VM.

The phrase in bold is what saved my work on a Win 2000 Workstation.

I had exactly the same issue reported here and doing a V2V work using converter made it working perfectly.

You should put this procedure in the "best practices" section of VMware

[rmoline1978]

Predicatore, I am not choosing to install VMWare tools. If I follow you correctly you would like me grab the boot.ini files, etc from a working machine and import them into this new non bootable virtual machine. This seems a bit antiquated from what I read I am not the first person this has happened to and this has to be a know issue to VMWare. I am all about "getting" stuff to work but only if it is the only option. Let me know your thoughts and thanks for your help.

Ryan

[rmoline1978]

When I go to configure the nonbootable VM it fails at 8% everytime

Ryan

[theanykey]

Do not do that boot.ini trick you mentioned ... can you instead post the boot.ini file contents from the physical/vm source? Also, please attach the vmware-converter-#.log file for the failed task.

[Predicatore]

Ryan,

my suggestion was to apply Converter to the non-bootable VM obtained from the P2V process using the options "Configura Machine" offered by the Converter tool.

You simply have to try using the V2V option offered by Converter. It worked for me.

[rmoline1978]

I have tried to use the utility in VM Converter and It fails at 8% everytime