Feature 'hv.capable' was 0, but must be at least 1 Error VM not initiating.

[CGPCG]

I have changed configuration several times with no avail. I am fairly new to the ESXI family and could use some help with this issue. Thank you in advance for your prompt response. I am by no means an expert in this field so please, no verbal abuse lol. 

[bluefirestorm]

What is your ESXi host hardware? Is it a physical machine or hosted in some cloud provider?

If it is a physical machine: for Intel CPU, make sure Intel VT-x (it could be called other names such as Intel Virtualization Technology) is enabled on the BIOS. For AMD CPU, make sure that SVM (or Secured Virtual Machine or something similar) is enabled in the BIOS.

For cloud hosted, you have to confirm/verify with the cloud provider whether nested virtualisation is supported for whatever plan you are on with cloud provider. And ask them to enable nested virtualisation if your plan allows it. Not all cloud providers allow you to run VMs within a VM.

On a note about the RAM, it shows 9.77GB. So you probably assigned 10000MB. Better to assign 10240MB to be true 10 gigabytes.

[CGPCG]

So, I am not onsite at the moment, however the server in question is physical. This happened the moment I made some tweaks to the CPU. Not sure exactly what I did but this is the notification I get when I go set said peripherals. Is there something I need to change at the host level? Do I have to go into the physical esxi install and make some changes? I’m very new to this software and was told I might need to change some values in the physical configuration of the server (on-site). Any help is greatly appreciated. 

[bluefirestorm]

You are not forthcoming with technical information and makes me think you are hiding something. That you know you more than you are letting on.

Making "tweaks" to the CPU without mentioning the CPU model let alone the brand and whatever that tweak may be. Not mentioning the ESXi version. You probably know you are using an unsupported CPU for the ESXi version.

Anyway, if you really need help, you have to supply more technical details.

[CGPCG]

I’m not sure why anyone would hide information if they were needing help. I simply wasn’t on-site to provide that information as it is the weekend and well… I was enjoying my time with family. Hopefully that tidbit of information puts you at ease. The server is an Asus with a    X2 XEON (R) E4562 @2.80Ghz 6144KB Level 2 cashe. Phoenix Bios 4.0 release 6.0 INTEL 6040000 12gb RAM. 2tb virtual disk. 

We were having some issues with the server acting like it was bogged down, it was then that I noticed that I was only using 1/4 of its processing power and decided to tweak the CPU settings (# of cores etc). This ESXI install was done years ago by a friend of mine who was familiar with VMware. So I haven’t really had to deal with it personally. As I stated before, I’m fairly new to the software (ESXI 6.5) and any help would be appreciated. 

[CGPCG]

If I missed anything let me know. Like I said, it’s an older version of ESXI but it’s worked well for years. Up until now of course… again it’s version 6.5. I will likely add some additional ram when I get a chance too. 

[bluefirestorm]

I cannot find a E4562 in the Intel ARK website.

This is the closest thing

https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/33084/intel-xeon-processor-e5462-12m-cache-2-80...

If that is the case, it is a very old CPU I don't think it is officially supported even with ESXi 6.5. It does not have EPT (which would make things a lot faster with VM especially with a modern OS such as Windows 10). So adding more vCPU won't really help if the server processor is indeed E5462.

You mentioned in passing about some peripheral but it was not in your original post.

If it was working before and not working now, you probably have to undo whatever changes you had made.

[CGPCG]

Indeed, the problem is I didn’t take a snapshot prior to making the changes… it was a stupid mistake that I will keep my eye on with future endeavors. I’ve read some other posts which talk about changing some of the values, the problem is I have no clue what exactly they’re talking about. Is this at boot up in the actual host software? (yellow and black interface). 

[CGPCG]

Yes, the processor is a little older. Again, had been running for years without incident. If I could spin it back up at least for a couple more weeks than I can begin my new build. Unfortunately I have some pretty important data on this one. 

[bluefirestorm]

It looks like the E54xx series is still a supported CPU for ESXi 6.5, but that is some seriously old CPU (almost 15yo), and probably have at least a 10year gap with the Windows 10 OS that runs inside the VM. The performance of VMs (especially for memory intensive applications) will be bad without EPT as the VM RAM access would have software overhead.

https://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/detail.php?deviceCategory=cpu&productid=21

If it is any consolation, I think taking a snapshot in this scenario would not have helped in this situation. Snapshots are used to save the state of the guest but the problem you face appears to be with the configuration in the VM (in the vmx file). Snapshot would not save the state of the vmx configuration file. If you have a backup of the vmx configuration file, maybe restore just the vmx configuration file of the problem VM. Do not restore the entire VM, otherwise it replaces all files including the virtual disks and whatever data is inside.

Otherwise, I would suggest you undo whatever you did with the VM configuration. Without really knowing what you did, it's hard to give anything specific.