Infrastructure Client - Boot screen too fast, can't read options, hit ESC.

[ckaye]

Hello VM!

I'm building a guest and need to boot off a CD on my local machine. I can, on the boot screen hit ESC and when promoted select "Boot from CD" after i connect my local CD to this guest thought the Infrastructure Client. The problem is the boot screen flash so quickly i had to reset many times to see what button i was to press. Then, even after i knew it was ESC clicking the mouse to activate the window after the client starts up and hitting ESC before the boot screen goes away is real test of skill. Is there any reason why you can't leave the boot screen up for even 3 or 5 seconds?

Thanks.

CK

[mittim12]

If you are using ESX 3.5 you can change the time the bios screen stays on the screen by adjusting the Power on boot delay located under the Options, boot options in the virtual machine settings. There is even an option to force boot into the bios if you wanted to do that. Hope this helps

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[weinstein5]

As the other poster said there is an option under the settings for the VM that will force the VM to BIOS menu on the next boot - under the advanced tab there is a boot option that can force this -

[ckaye]

Thanks that is very helpfull to know. I'm still running 3.0 but yet another reason to upgrade. By end of month i hope.

[BenConrad]

If you connect the VIC directly to the ESX server where the VM lives you should be able to overcome this limitation. Alternatively, you use VirtualCenter and wait until the VM is fully booted and then choose the menu from the VIC to 'reboot' the VM. You will see the entire BIOS screen on the restart.

The v3.5 BIOS timeout is a nice feature they have added.

Ben