VM cannot boot from a bootable Windows installation disk?

[jeebob]

Hi Guys,

New to the world of ESXI, currently running v6.0.0 Kernel 2809209, managing the console through VSphere Client 6.0 build 3562874.

I am building VM's, using ISO's downloaded from MSDN. Most are working without issue, however there are a handful of stubborn ISO's that refuse outright to boot!

Each of these has been tested independantly for boot capability, using the QUEMU Simple Boot tool. By dropping the ISO into place, the virtual environment boots successfully to the windows installation, so I know the ISO's are fine.

I then made sure the disks were connected and powered on at boot, and also went into vBIOS and ensured CDROM was set to the priority boot method. Also, by using the boot menu and manually opting to boot, it fails to do so also, and then gets stuck at a network boot attempt.

I enclose a copy of the logs from this particular machine, and wonder if anyone can have a look and advise what may be wrong, as far as I can see, there appears to be no reason why it would fail...

[dariusd]

A Windows Vista x64 .iso should definitely be bootable on that host if the .iso image has been copied intact.

Have you checked that ESXi sees the full original file size of the .iso file?  The Windows Vista x64 editions are a touch over 2 GBytes in size, and some file sharing protocols will truncate the file at 2 GBytes exactly, which would most likely render the disc unbootable.  Also check the md5 or sha1 hashes of the .iso image on the datastore against those published on the MSDN download page, just to verify the integrity of the upload to the datastore.

Anything else in common between the stubborn images to distinguish them from the cooperative images?

Cheers,

--

Darius

[jeebob]

Not sure how to check the MD5 from within the datastore, are you able to provide any directions?

[jeebob]

nevermind, just found the steps

And of course, the MD5 doesnt match... that might be why...

https://www.experts-exchange.com/articles/11650/HOW-TO-Upload-an-ISO-CD-ROM-DVD-ROM-image-to-a-VMwar...

[dariusd]

At the ESXi shell, you can also do an:

   ls -l en_windows_vista_n_sp2_x64_dvd_342268.iso

(or equivalent) to find out the size of the file on the datastore, and compare that with the expected file size from the MSDN site.

By far the most common problem would be a simple truncated download from MSDN, but you appear to have eliminated that possibility with your earlier testing with QEMU.

Starting from a known-bootable image, the most common problem I've seen is that the file has been truncated (usually by Microsoft Windows/SMB file sharing) on its way to the datastore, and will show a size difference, but sometimes a chunk of the file data might just get corrupted along the way, in which case the file size will match but the md5sum will differ.

Cheers,

--

Darius

[jeebob]

Having just attempted to download multiple copies of multiple disks, they all seem to be failing now!

For example, just downloaded one, the actual MD5 is: e4ce0b193d94279e4dce1098d6b5afeb though MSDN expect the MD5 to be: bdadc46a263a7bf67eb38609770e4fdbd05247cb, as you can see, there is a difference in the length, so unless WinMD5Free V1.20 is wrong, all of these are corrupting, but I shall try and run it through the iso tester...

[dariusd]

An MD5 sum is 32 hex digits long (128 bits); A SHA-1 sum is 40 hex digits long (160 bits).

It looks like you're trying to compare an MD5 sum against a SHA-1 sum.  I don't have an ESXi instance handy to check (seriously ) but it probably has a sha1sum command you can use instead of md5sum to get a SHA-1 sum of the .iso image from the ESXi shell.

Cheers,

--

Darius