7B bluescreen on every VM created from image

[zzStasis]

I am running a couple ESXi 4.1 servers to have an emulated production environment. I am to take the acronis backup images from the production environment (taken with Acronis Advanced Backup and Recovery 10) and bring them up in our test environment. The machines run everything from win2k server through win2k8 R2. I spent several days getting the 2 DCs virtualized (both 2k8 R2) but was finally able to do it with some help from sanbarrow.com and alot of testing.

The procedure I have been using is to create a new virtual machine, with a similar setup to what the existing machine has (get it the right OS, proper drives and sizes, etc.) I add 2 cd drives and mount one with the Acronis bootable CD, and another with an ISO of the .TIB images. I basically treat the virtual environment as physical and do the traditional Acronis restoration inside the VM. I settled on this method after trying the VM converter and it constantly not recoginizing the source format (i was unable to convert any .TIB images)

Ive been able to get the 2 2k8R2 DCs, and 1 XP client machine virtualized, and every one of the 20 or so I have left go through this process, and then blue screen with the 0x0000007B INNACCESSABLE_BOOT_DEVICE error. Ive gone in and checked the boot.ini file and it seems to be pointing at the proper location, ive tried them with all 3 controller types and get similar errors. Considering its happening on almost all of them, the only thing I could think it would be is a driver issue. These are fairly standard machines, mostly Dell workstations and a few Dell servers. I cannot install/modify/change anything on the production environment, so I just have the images to work with. Ive read through http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?cmd=displayKC&externalId=1005208 this about injecting SCSI drivers into the setup but that requires changing the machine and getting new images. Im wondering; since I can browse through the image, can i get in and add or remove a driver from there to help the process? Ive also looked through http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?cmd=displayKC&externalId=1006626 to make sure im not running anything that would foul it up. The only software I can think of that may is 'Diskkeeper' which is a defragmentation/optimization software that we run on most of our production machines, but im not sure that it manages the disks below the OS level.

Any suggestions would be MUCH appreciated, im working under alot of restrictions and its making this difficult!

I didnt attach .vmx files since there were so many machines but I can as needed.

[a_p_ · Accepted solution]

Welcome to the Community,

did you try to use the VMware Converter Standalone yet. It has an option "Configure Machine" which can be used to inject the appropriate drivers to a VM which does not boot.

André

[zzStasis]

I hadnt tried to go back in yet and configure the machine, only to convert images. I tried it out and that may be the ticket for me, I ran one machine through it, it barked about missing sysprep files so I downloaded all of the neccesary ones from MS and got them setup. I was able to boot the machine after it finished. I didnt see an option for injecting drivers, but im wondering if either the sysprep files was all it needed? Im not 100% sure whats even in the sysprep files but I will try this on a few more of the machines and report back!

[a_p_]

Sysprep is not what you want to do in your case. This would modify the systems identities!

All you need to do is to "Reconfigure destination virtual machine" and - if you want - "Install VMware tools on the destination virtual machine". see http://www.vmware.com/pdf/convsa_43_guide.pdf (pages 79 ff)

André

[bulletprooffool]

I had this last week - my solution was to create a BartPe disk and inject the VMSCSI drivers for the host - worked on several machines.

havea  look here for instructiuons on how to create / use this:

http://www.rtfm-ed.co.uk/vmware-content/ultimate-p2v/

[zzStasis]

Andre, I appreciate your help so much! This wound up fixing every machine I had an issue with. Just a quick note for anyone finding this later, the Sysprep option is the 'Configure guest preferences for the virtual machine' I did have that checked on a couple but it just wound up dropping them from the domain and I was able to re-join later. I just used the 'reconfigure destination virtual machine' and 'install VMware tools on the imported virtual machine' (to save a step) and it fixed each.

I would actually high suggest this method for anyone using Acronis .TIB images and having issues getting them converted. If the converter wont work for you just turn the .TIBs into .ISOs (with ImgBurn or whatever app you like), make an .ISO out of the Acronis bootable the same way, and upload both to the ESXi server, then in your VM just add a second CD drive and mount both images and restore like you would a physical machine. After that if you get the 7B bluescreens just run the 'configure machine' option in the converter. I wasnt able to use it to convert any machines straight to VM but I was able to use it to fix all of the VMs after conversion (about 20 machines, all from acronis images, all different OSs)

Thanks for the other suggestions as well

[nineshot]

I tried everything to get my machine to load. What ended up doing it is changing the controller type. I did the oposite of the walkthrough below. I delete my VHD under sata and added it under IDE.

http://www.sysprobs.com/add-sata-hard-disk-virtual-machine-virtualbox

[Sedighzadeh]

This is the right answer!