VMWare Coverter Tool - need some help

[amctech]

Greetings. I have just started using the converter tool so I'm still fumbling in the dark. I am trying to convert an XP 2000 Pro SP4 workstation into a virtual machine. We are running VMWare Server 1.0.4 Build 56528. Until we can successfully get some of our physical machines converted to virtual, we will not be able to purchase any other editions until we can prove this is going to work. My conversion crashes at 97% with an error on Step 3: Preparing target virtual machine: Error: unknown error returned by VMWare converter agent. I have the VMWare server and Converter (3.0.2u1 Build 62456) apps installed on a Windows 2003 Server SP2. I did have two CD drives (one write and one read) installed on this workstation and a floopy all of which I have disabled. Any guidance or direction you can provide on what I need to look at would be appreciated?

Thx.

[ascari]

Hi

error at 97% of your conversion process depend for VM creation.

1) is conversion process migration running in an Administrator enviroment? (for converter and for source physical machine)

2) have you a sufficent disk space for target vmdk files?

bye Alberto

[amctech]

I am using an account that has Admin rights but not using the actual Adminstrator account on either machine. Does that make a differnce?

Yes, my target machine has plenty of space to create the new machine. I did run into that problem earlier and corrected the destination location.

[ascari]

may be! i don't know the difference between two users. Is new admin user copied from biult-in administrator?

Otherwise use administrator brobably you not have sufficent permission to create target new vm.

bye A

[theanykey]

msdos.sys is non-existent or inaccessible

Details

Configuring VM fails at 97%.

Converter logs indicate an inaccessible or non-existant MSDOS.SYS file.

Solution

On most NT based systems, the msdos.sys file exist but is empty. You can easily recreate the MSDOS.SYS file. Reference Microsoft KB 118579. The require entries are as follows:

HostWinBootDrv=Root of Boot Drive

Default: C

Purpose: Specifies the location for the root of the boot drive.

UninstallDir=Root of Boot Drive Default: C

Purpose: Specifies the location of the W95undo.dat and W95undo.ini files. These files are necessary to uninstall Windows 95.

WinBootDir=Windows Folder

Default: Folder specified during Setup (for example, C:\Windows) Purpose: Lists the location of the necessary files for booting.

WinDir=Windows Folder

Default: Folder specified during Setup (for example, C:\Windows)

Purpose: Lists the location of the Windows 95 folder specified during Setup.

Note: Some NT based systems use the WINNT dir instead of C:\Windows