Scrambled screen when booting ESXi 5.5u2 installer via UEFI... comes up fine with BIOS boot..

[cfineman]

I'm trying to set up a home server using a SuperMicro X10SL7-F + e3-1241v3.

I burned a DVD and am able to get the installer running booting through BIOS (was able to install onto an on-board USB stick and stood up a test linux VM... no sweat).

I decided to re-install using a UEFI boot instead and it seems my monitor is displaying it in the incorrect resolution (monitor claims the installer is using 800x600 yet when I use the BIOS boot, it says 1024x768). (I see ESXi yellow and it seems to responsive to my input).

FWIW I also tried creating a uefi compatible usb stick and that just gives me an error (Command line is empty, Syntax Error)

Any suggestions for moving forward? Am I wrong in assuming UEFI is preferred in this day and age?

[r00ster]

Hey Cfineman,

We are having similar problems, we have a SuperMicro X10SL7-F with an Xeon E3-1246V3 :smileyplain:.

As soon as we boot up into the setup of VMware ESXi 5.5u2 or ESXi 5.5u1 the resolution changes and the installation is getting scrambled and unreadable.

When we boot up using a USB stick with an ESXi already present it works just fine.

The weird thing is two months we build a machine with this exact same setup (Motherboard, CPU, Memory) and we didn't run into of these problems (same BIOS and IMPI).

So if you got any pointers we can try we might be able to solve this problems together .

Thanks,

Roger

[r00ster]

Okay, so we resolved the problem we are not exactly sure what did the trick, because we are not able to replicate the problem.

We installed a PCI-express videocard into the X16 slot, but we didn't get any image on the monitor so the videocard did not work.

So we go into the BIOS and changed the setting  Advanced -> PCIe/PCI/PnP Configuration -> VGA Priority -> from Onboard to Offboard

We still didn't get the PCI-Express videocard to work but the installation of ESXi 5.5 U2 did show properly.

After the installation was done we removed the PCI-Express videocard and went back into the BIOS to change the VGA Priority option to Onboard but it was already changed to this setting. We expected the same problem as we had before with the scrambled screen but now everything is showing perfectly :smileylaugh:.

So our problem is solved but we do not exactly know what we did that fixed it.:smileyconfused:

[r00ster]

Also what might have solved the problem is that we have re-seat the CPU in the socket.

We also did check if the CPU was genuine with Intel Support, the Xeon box was missing the hologram sticker and a the font was different from a I5 box we had for comparison. It turned out the CPU and the box are both genuine

Also in between did a Windows 7 install and we never had any problems, so we are still not sure which component was causing this problem with the installation of ESXi 5.5 U1 and U2.

[cfineman]

Glad you were able to get yours to work... i'm still not having any luck. I had a spare PCI-X video card laying around... threw that in and the system had no problem using it... was able to run through a boot scenario with the new card without any problems.

I tried using vesamenu.c32 and added "MENU RESOLUTION 1024 768" in the .CFG file but that made zero difference.

Really not sure what's going on here. Sadly the USB stick pathway is also still blocked. Both (the USB and ISO) load up just fine when I build a workstation-based VM using EFI.

I may have to call SuperMicro about this... feels like the issue is on their end.

[r00ster]

Hey Cfineman,

I think I'm going to make your day, after a few reboots we did get the same problem and we tried the steps as described above to try and solve it. Also the new ESXi 6.0 did not work using a CD or bootable USB stick.

We tried resetting the UEFI/BIOS because we couldn't think of anything else to do, and all of a sudden the problem was solved again. We noticed that the USB stick was no longer booting using the UEFI but like the old fashion way. The wierd thing is that we couldn't find any option to turn of UEFI booting in the UEFI but with the BIOS reset using the optimized settings we suddenly got this option.

Also we are now able to recreate the problem, because if we boot with the same USB stick using UEFI we get a scrambled screen and if we boot using the "normal"  mode everything is working fine in 5.5 u2 and 6.0.

So hopefully your problem is solved as well using these steps.

Have a nice day! :smileylaugh:

r00ster

[tseanf]

Note, I was running into the same issue.  Once I installed ANY PCIe card, it seemed to resolve the issue.  Odd.

[DonWS]

I ran into the same scrambled screen issue when trying to install ESXi 6.0 U2 on my X10SAT board. Booting 6.0 from a USB stick was working fine, but when I attempted to boot the 6.0 Update 2 iso image from CD-ROM, the screen appeared scrambled. For me, enabling VGA Pallet Snooping in the BIOS solved the issue.

[exreme_virus]

Thanks , Resetting the BIOS helped to install the ESXI.