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kautium
Contributor
Contributor

Not able to install Windows Server 2008 R2 to Vmware vSphere 4.0?

We've installed a brand new Vmware vSphere 4.0 Enterprise -environment which we have been using for few months now and which has proven to be stable, fast and flexible virtualization platform, but now that Windows Server 2008 R2 has come out, we seem to be having one major problem with it --> WS 2008 R2 Enterprise (x64) installation chrashes with the same kind of error you normally get with faulty media.

The error message says something like this:

- - - -

Windows cannot install required files. The file may be corrupt or missing.... error code 0x80070570

- - - -

We are using an ISO-image as install source and the image file should be just fine, since we have made physichal copies from it and the install has gone all the way through without any problems to other servers using them. The ISO-image is located in one of Vmware datastores.

And yes, I do know that Vmware vSphere v4.0 support for Windows Server 2008

R2 is still considered as "experimental", but as far as I know, it should not be causing problems like this and by reading posts here at Vmware communities and in some other forums, it looks like most people have been succesfull at installing WS 2008 R2 to Vmware environments and all possible problems they have encountered have been seen elsewhere.

All of our ESX-hosts have been updated with the latest patches and as besides this "one little hickup", all components are working flawlessly.

Although this is pretty far fetched, this could also be a hardware related issue, so here's a list of all of the components dealing with Vmware -->

- 4 x HP BL460C G6. With 2 x Intel L5520, 32GB, + mezzanine-slots occupied with extra network card and fibre card

- HP EVA 4400, which has 2 x 1TB datastores for VM's + 200GB for templates and ISO-files

- EVA-integrated SAN switches with zoning properly configured

- Servers (with ESX 4.0) boot straight from the SAN

- HP Virtual Connect (which is configured to hand over 4GB uplink to virtual machines)

- Virtual Connect transmits all VLAN's to Vmware virtual switch, from which they can be handed to VM's as required

- Vmware vMotion and Service console have got their own network cards per server as best practices guide suggests and the 2 remaining network cards are dedicated for VM traffic

- vCenter Server 4.0 and the two SQL databases it needs are running on BL460C G5 (1xCPU, 4GB, Win 2008 Enterprise 32bit)

- There are only about 30 virtual machines running in the system so far, so there is no shortage of resources yet

Any ideas, what could be wrong with the installation of WS 2008 R2 to our system...? Is there even anybody else who has had similar problems?

Thanks in advance.

Marko K.

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9 Replies
kautium
Contributor
Contributor

Problem resolved. We loaded the ISO-image once again from MS website and transferred it to datastore (for the 3rd time) and now it looks like 2008R2 install goes all the way through correctly.

It is funny though that we are still able to make working installation DVD's from the same image which apparently is somehow corrupted and which is not usable within Vmware.

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DSeaman
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I would suggest you perform a hash on your images so you can verify every bit is as Microsoft intended. MS has the hashes on their TechNet/MSDN sites for the various ISOs. Hashtab is great free tool to calculate hashes for files.

Derek Seaman
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sky2
Contributor
Contributor

Hello there,

I am having a system hanging problem with windows server 2008 R2 working over vSpere 4.0. Anybody had the same problem, is there any incompatibility between both system.

Thanks.

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kautium
Contributor
Contributor

At what point does your OS hang? If it happens when browsing files in exporer, it is a bug that is caused by SVGA driver in current version of Vmware tools. Remove the driver and everything is working again.

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sky2
Contributor
Contributor

Thanks for your replay, there is no point in particular, maybe when I am installing some programs, for example the last time it hanged when I was working with SQL server.

I did what you recommend me to do, but the mouse seems to work more slowly.

I have seen another comment about SVGA driver but it was for windows 7

Now the driver I get is VGA standard it doesn't seem to work like SVGA II ?

Thanks for your help.

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kautium
Contributor
Contributor

The problem (and the fix) for OS crashing occationally when browsing files in explorer is the same for Win 7 and Win 2008 R2 since they both use the same code under the hood.

However it looks like you may be experiencing some other problem.

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mudha
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

having same problem, my installtion hangs at cdrom/dvd driver not found and it stops at thr.

any idea what to do ?

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tking0036
Contributor
Contributor

Internet Explorer Causes the iso to download weird. If you look at the size it might be like 421mb when it should be like 3gb. You should download it with firefox or somthing.

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SubZero78
Contributor
Contributor

I had the same issues a few days before.

This is the way i solved the problem:

On Installation Wizard of MS Windows Server 2008 where to chose the target partition for installation click the advanced options an format the partition manually.

Hope i could help somebody else...

Regards

Andy Bauer

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