Win 10 VM uploaded from Workstation 15 fails to start due to EFI Error "EFI Virtual Disk 0:0 Unsuccessful"

[zoics]

I have uploaded a VM from workstation to ESXi 5.5.  This is a template vm that I had prepared in Workstation.  (additionally I exported as an OVF and imported which gave me the advantage of Thin provisioning the disks, but the result was the same).

I get taken to the EFI boot manager, but have not successfully been able to boot.

I have removed the line from the .vmx file  - firmware = "efi" - but this had the expected effect of not allowing the vm to boot.

I have also tried to add a boot option via the maintenance manager above but this failed (I may have been doing this wrong).

From the vmware.log I see:

Guest: EFI Shell inactive in default boot sequence

Msg_Post: Warning

[msg.Backdoor.OsNotFound] No operating system was found.

Any help appreciated! 

On a side note - I had to convert the OVF using the OVFtool to use the SHA1 algorithm to allow for import as the ESXi 5.5 did not support the SHA256 verification.

[continuum]

Did you import the WS-vmdk to ESXi format ?

If you dont know - which createType is listed in the vmdk-descriptorfile ?

[zoics]

Thanks for the reply - I have tried uploading from within Workstation itself to the remote ESXi Server.  And in addition I have exported to OVF which i thought would allow import into any system not just VMware.  I will look at this when next I can access and get back to you.  I presume running 'vmkfstools -e filename.vmdk' against teh file on the host is a good check?

[zoics]

Ok, so looking at this, apologies for the delay, I see that I have a .vmdk of 10GB.  I also have a .vmxf file and an empty .vmsd file.  My understanding was that this is used by the snapshot manager, when you have snapshots otherwise is null.

I would expect VMware Workstation to handle the upload appropriately, also from an export to OVF this should import without issue?