ESXi

Hello everyone,

I hope that someone has come across a similar issue and I will be able to resolve the problem.

I have a VM (Windows 2008 R2 STD), 4 GB of RAM and 2 vCPUs, 2 drives (one system – 50 GB, and one swap – 8 GB). Nothing special.

The VM was restarted couple of days ago and after that I cannot get into Windows.  I get System Recovery Options box. I noticed that all drive letters are mixed up (lease see file attached).  I have tried to assign the correct drive letters using diskpart utility, but after a restart it goes back again.

I would greatly appreciate your help on the issue.

Kind Regards,

Attachment(s)

System Recovery Options.pdf   251 KB 1 version

it can be an image issue... but try cloning the machine after you fix the drive letters and check if the same issue happens...

Hi AkashH,

Thank you for your reply.

I have tried clonning the VM but. After I run the diskpart utility is OK. However, after a restart of the VM they are again all over the place. I have tried clonning it but since the drive letters are messed up it just replicates the issue.

A co-worker suggested that it might be Storage DRS. He thinks that by moving files (vmdk) around somehow SDRS scewes up the partition table. I said it is complete rubbish, SDRS has nothing to do with it. Anyway. I shall wait to see if someone else has come across this issue.

Regards,

What kind of installation image did you use for the VM? It's kind of unusual to have a system recover partition (the 49GB partition) in a VM!?

It also looks like the VM has a DVD attached, please make the VM does not accidentally boot from the DVD rather than from disk.

André

Hello Andre,

Thank you for the reply.

The VM is a part of a clustered application, which is in a testing mode. The first VM is fine and has all applications loaded wheres this one keeps failing. Both VMs are created from the same template. Both VMs have two drives (C:\ - 50 GB, and Z:\ Pagefile). See file attached.

As far as the DVD is concerned I have attached it just for testing.

I have restarted the VM various times with or without the DVD attached.

Also, after I removed/assigned drive letters with diskpart utility I shutdown the machine and cloned it. No joy unfortunately.

I want to get to the bottom of this for this VM is a test VM, and soon is going into production, and I will be in trouble if this carries on.

Kind Regards,

Check this link http://communities.vmware.com/message/1439351#1439351

Hello AakashJ,

Thank you for your response.

The VM is not a domain controller and it has not been converted. It was created from a template and as I said in my previous post the other VM is fine, whereas this VM keeps going into System Recovery Options.

Kind Regards,

I have same issue on VM.

I am seeing the below out for volumes, is there an issue since I don't see boot partition?

DISKPART> list volume

Volume ### Ltr Label Fs Type Size Status Info
---------- --- ----------- ----- ---------- ------- --------- --------
Volume 0 Z DVD-ROM 0 B No Media
Volume 1 C NTFS Partition 119 GB Healthy System
Volume 2 E Cluster_E NTFS Partition 1419 GB Healthy
Volume 3 F Cluster_F NTFS Partition 402 GB Healthy
Volume 4 G Cluster_G NTFS Partition 404 GB Healthy
Volume 5 M Cluster_M_M NTFS Partition 1021 MB Healthy
Volume 6 H Cluster_H NTFS Partition 604 GB Healthy
Volume 7 B NTFS Partition 990 MB Healthy
Volume 8 MP_DATA_01 NTFS Partition 801 GB Healthy
B:\MP_DATA_01\
Volume 9 MP_DATA_02 NTFS Partition 501 GB Healthy

Hello,

I'm facing the same issue, and I have no idea of what is causing this issue. I would like to know if somebody have any suggestion.

Many Thanks!!

When you are in diskpart utility, select volume 1 and type attributes volume. What is the value of "No Default Drive Letter"? It should be "Yes"

I am facing same issue. Not able to find any solution and this is the only blog where I found exact problem. Can any one please suggest me the solution. Its very urgent as one critical system is doing the same thing.

Thanks!

Gaurav Arora

Hi

We have a customer with exactly the same issue , after restart of the VM's it goes directly in recovery mode , we have found that some .DLL files also are missing on those Win2008/2012R2 servers .

Microsoft haven't either been able to see whats causing this issue .

Regards

Patrik

I had this problem a while back when deploying from a template.  So I scrapped all my templates and created .ovf or ova's instead and I haven't had corrupted installs.  I unfortunately don't have an explanation but that Is something you might want to consider.

Anyone find a solution to this issue?

I deployed a new Windows 2008 r2 server from CD (old fashion way) two weeks ago and just now it restarted right in front of my eyes and came up with the system recovery option. I didn't work from a template or anything like that. This, by the way, is the second server that had that problem today. Both created from scratch.

Luckily I have made backups of the servers so restoring them is no big deal (one is a printer server) but I hope this is not going to happen often.

Does anyone know why this is happening?

Hi,

Recently, I had the same problem. I found out that when the disks have been detached and attached again, this issue had been resolved. It worked for me very well.:smileyhappy:

Hello guys/gals,

I had the same problem.  My solution, which I read above, was to remove the VM from the enclave, go to the vmx file (on my NAS) and re-add the VM to the inventory. I have successfully rebooted several times since.

Thanks for all of your inputs.  Have a great day.

Same issue here.  Win10 template used on multiple hosts in the same cluster.  Sometimes the image deploys properly and build process goes through with no issues, and sometimes after the initial deployment it goes straight into boot recovery mode (this is when main cluster is selected during the deployment).  If that same machine is powered off and migrated to another host in the same cluster, it boots normally and the build is fine.  This only seems to be happening on certain hosts.  We are looking into those hosts to see if there is a difference between them and the ones that have no issues with the template.