Failed Conversion - Possible controlsetXXX issue?

[iamwiz82]

I'm having an issue P2Ving a machine and I think I have finally traced back my issue and just wanted to throw this out to everyone.  I have had a ticket open for awhile now with VMWare.

My currentcontrolset points to controlset015 instead of 001 (or 002) due to some issues with this particular server some time in late 2008.  My VMWare Converter fails every time at 98% and the VM is non-bootable with a BSOD STOP error of 7b.   A re-run of the configuration also fails.  I have been struggling to figure out why and stumbled onto a fix to get the machine to at least boot, partially.  I injected the SAS drivers and then enabled them to start in ControlSet015 (in lieu of most KB articles which say 001 or 002).  That booted the machine but it was still non-functional since the other drivers did not exist. 

I began to really dig into the logs and found this: 

2014-02-20T10:26:56.150-05:00 [07204 warning 'Default'] ERROR 2 opening key mntApi69177312230355024\ControlSet0015.

Note the key is ControlSet0015, not ControlSet015.  This got me to thinking, maybe Converter is taking the Select keys and adding 'ControlSet00' to the number listed, thereby adding too many 0s when a controlset number has two digits.  I did a test and changed the default controlset to 31 and re-ran a configuration and was greeted with:

2014-03-10T14:25:39.439-04:00 [12060 warning 'Default'] ERROR: Unable to open key mntApi33130316230358670\ControlSet0031.

Aha, so I think that this is it.  Anyone have any ideas and/or workarounds?  Obviously I'd like to just ditch this server and start fresh but that isn't an option, I'm afraid.

[POCEH]

Seem there is an error in Converter with ControlSet with # bigger than 9... Could you try to change HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Select\Current to value 9? And try again. HTH

[iamwiz82]

I did try a simple rename of the controlset keys, but no luck there.  I received permission errors.  I suspect that they keys cannot be touched.  I did try to export 015 and import it into 001 and then change the SELECT key but no luck there either.

[POCEH]

Just change the value of 'Current' to something between 0 and 9.

[POCEH]

Ok, there is other workaround for your case:

- convert machine without reconfig

- attach the system disk to other VM with Windows, load the registry in regedit and manipulate ControlSet in the following manner - delete ControlSet009, rename ControlSet015 to ControlSet009, change the value of Current to 9, detach registry, then detach disk. (The registry is located in \Windows\system32\config folder, if there is no SYSTEM hive there look at SYSTEM\CurentControlSet\Control\hivelist where the registry is placed)

- configure machine

That's all

HTH

[iamwiz82]

It doesn't appear that you can rename the controlset keys as there are protected keys somewhere downstream.  I'm sure I could trace it back and find them eventually but I fear changing permissions might cause more harm than good.  I have opted to instead build a new VM and to migrate the data over to that. 

Interesting issue, however.  My assigned engineer has put in a PR regarding the issue.  I am sure it's happened before but no one noticed that this was the actual issue.