I had a physical Windows Server 2003 machine fail that needed to be recovered. I was able to pull the drives out and image them with Acronis. I then was able to convert the image into a VMDK and load it on a ESXi 5.5 host. I created a new VM and attached the vmdk. Now when I try to boot the VM as soon as I see the Server 2003 splash screen the machine crashes with a 0x000007b Blue Screen. I'm assuming it has something to do with SCSI drivers. I can attach the vmdk to another VM and access it. I've tried using a BartPE boot disk but I can't access the drive when I do that. I need to get the VM working since it has a lot of archived data on it. I'm hoping someone can point me in the right direction.
Since you suspect the SCSI drivers - did you check what SCSI controller the VM is using? LSI Logic should be default for Windows 2k3. If it is not, you may try to edit the VM and change it.
You may also try reconfiguring it again with converter.
Since you suspect the SCSI drivers - did you check what SCSI controller the VM is using? LSI Logic should be default for Windows 2k3. If it is not, you may try to edit the VM and change it.
You may also try reconfiguring it again with converter.
I tried changing the SCSI controller type but none of them work. I didn't actually use converter to create the VMDK, I had to use another tool. Acronis was only able to convert it's image to a VHD, then I had to convert the VHD to a VMDK. Will converter take an existing VMDK and run it through the process again?
As mentioned by patanassov you may try running "Configure Machine" against the virtual machine, to see whether this injects the required drivers. Make sure the Windows 2003 VM is configured with the default "LSI Logic Parallel" controller.
André
Thank you, that seems to have resolved the issue. I did not know that converter had this ability.