DCPROMO of Windows 8 running on vSphere 5 U1

[dbutch1976]

Hello,

Since upgrading my vCenter/vSphere environment to 5 U1 I am now able to install and configured Windows 8 VMs (both server and core) and can also install VMtools and VMXnet3 nics etc.  (Nice job fixing this with U1 VMware!)

However, I am having an odd issue which appears to be a a VMware problem.  After promoting the Windows 8 VM to domain controller it will no longer boot.  Monitoring the performance tab I can see a sharp memory and CPU spike however the machine will not boot into windows.  Hitting F8 several times will allow me to boot into safe mode which comes up fine, however I cannot find any problem that is preventing the machine from booting.

Here's why I don't think this is a Windows issue -  In order to further isolate the problem I installed Windows 8 on physical hardware and promoted it to a domain controller without an issue.  After that I did a P2V of the physical box into my VMware environment and it turned on without an issue, so effectively I now have a Windows 8 DC functioning in my VMware environment, however I am unable to promote a member Windows 8 VM to DC successfully.

Any thoughts or suggestions?   Has anyone else tried to promote a Windows 8 member VM to DC?

Thanks.

[dbutch1976]

Some additional info, I can confirm that the exact same behaviour happens with promoting and Windows 8 Core machine to Domain Controller using  Powershell.  If anyone would like to try to reproduce it on either core or GUI you can run this on your Windows 8 server from the command line:

Powershell

Import-Module ADDSDeployment

Install-ADDSDomainController -DoNotConfigureGlobalCatalog:$false -CreateDNSDelegation:$false -Credential (Get-Credential) -CriticalReplicationOnly:$false -DatabasePath "C:\Windows\NTDS" -DomainName "DC.local" -InstallDNS:$true -LogPath "C:\Windows\NTDS" -RebootOnCompletion:$true -SiteName "Default-First-Site-Name" -SYSVOLPath "C:\Windows\SYSVOL" -Force:$true

Everything should work fine however after reboot the VM becomes unresponsive, both CPU and memory spike considerably.  I've tried leaving the VM overnight and it did not recover.

[ibmjrsmith · Accepted solution]

I had the same problem, but I stumbled upon a workaround. When I built my first Windows 8 Server Beta image I specified Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 (64-bit) as the guest operating system. I didn't notice that vSphere 5 U1 added an option for Microsoft Windows 8 Server (64-bit) until after I had installed Active Directory Domain Services and promoted the image to a domain controller. Everything was working fine until I decided to change the Guest OS to Windows 8. When I rebooted, all I had was a blank screen. I assumed the image was toast and I rebuilt it using Windows 8 as the Guest OS. Everything worked fine again until I installed AD DS and promoted the image to a domain controller. After the promotion, the system rebooted to a blank screen. On a whim, I powered off the image, changed the Guest OS to Windows 2008 R2 and powered it on. Surprisingly, the system came up. Not sure what it means or if it is of any use to you.

[dbutch1976]

I can confirm that I am seeing the exact same behaviour.  It turns out that the machine I successfully P2V'd (which was a physical windows 8 domain controller) was also configured as a Windows 2008 R2 machine.  When I changed it to Windows 8 I immedidately started having problems.  I would suggest that anyone who is having issues performing beta testing with Windows 8 should select Windows 2008 R2 as the OS in the options-->general section of the VM properties instead of Windows 8.

Does anyone know what the Windows 8 setting is doing under the hood?  Whatever it's doing is causing problems when the machine is promoted to a DC, I'm not sure if there are other places that people may be having issues.

Thanks so much for your help ibmjrsmith, it must have taken quite a bit of stumbling before you came across that fix!

[tejas201110141]

I have faced the same issue after installing Windows 8 server on VMware workstation.. to solve the issue enable Graphics acceleration,, Check below guide for details...

http://mytricks.in/2012/03/solved-windows-server-8-beta-black-screen-after-installing-vmware-tools.h...

http://mytricks.in/2012/03/guide-how-to-install-windows-server-8-beta-on-vmware-workstation.html

[ibmjrsmith]

I can't find an option to enable graphics acceleration under vSphere 5. There is an option to enable 3D support, but it is grayed out.