After ESXi 4 install, BIOS goes straight to "No OS installed"

[alexmunk]

I went through the install process and it said that it installed successfully. Because of the video tutorial (for 3.5) I figured that after the reboot, the BIOS would be followed by some VMware management app. But nothing. It goes from BIOS to "No operating system is currently installed on this computer."

Dell Poweredge T105, Quad Core AMD Opteron 1352, 64 bit enabled.

Thanks,

[gorto · Accepted solution]

Alex, from the BIOS, Boot Order - promote the media used as the destination for the install - Hard Disk I would guess

[Datto]

If re-ordering the boot order doesn't solve the problem you may be using a hard drive controller or RAID controller that ESXi can't entirely decipher. If this is a single SATA hard drive in a non-RAID setup then see if there is a choice in your System BIOS for portraying the SATA hard drive as ACPI for (or another choice) and try using that choice instead of the choice you're currently using for your SATA drive.

You could use Boot N Nuke to take the hard drive completely back to a blank hard drive and then try reinstalling. Also, if this is a non-production system, you could install ESXi 4.0 to a USB stick and boot ESXi 4.0 from the USB stick instead of booting from your hard drive.

Instructions for installing ESXi 4.0 to a USB Stick:

http://www.vladan.fr/how-to-install-esxi-40-on-usb-memory-key/

Darik's Boot N Nuke:

http://www.dban.org/download

Datto

[alexmunk]

Thank you for your detailed reply. The boot order was, indeed, the problem. Weird though: it wasn't enough to change the boot order. I also had to change hard drive sequence from AB to BA (two disks, non-RAID). I thought I had told ESX to install on the hard drive in Port A, but apparently not.

So I changed the Boot Sequence, and then the Hard Disk Drive Sequence, and breathed a sigh of relief when VMware fired up... but then it failed saying "Failed to find boot partition." Any ideas?

Thank you,