Can't access bios of Windows guests on ESX 3.0.2

[mikejc]

I am getting ready to pull my hair out with this... It's nearly impossible to either enter the BIOS or change the boot order of any VM's I create. I'll boot the VM, wait until them VMware logo appears, where it says to hit ESC for boot order, or F2 for setup. I can try a million times, but I have like a .00001% success rate of getting in. I don't understand how this isn't an option you can configure with the VM off, but at any rate, what am I doing wrong? It shouldn't be this difficult...

[java_cat33]

If you power off your VM - edit the settings of the VM, select the options tab, boot options - set the delay to 5000. Power on the VM and try again.

[kastro]

Power-on VM and then make soft-reset of VM (CTRL-ALT-INS). Then you should be able to fit F2 to BIOS of ESX to select boot order.

[Dave_Mishchenko]

He would need to upgrade to 3.5 / 3i to have this functionality.

[mikejc]

I was going to say, I don't have the boot options suggested, but if that isn't avaialble until 3.5 that would explain why. I tried the CTRL-ALT-INS before trying to jump into the BIOS... that seemed to work if the VM had no OS on disk, but if it did, that didn't even work. This is such a simple thing, but it is severely impeding my ability to use this as a viable platform for image building and testing... Is there a way to edit the VMX file or something to define the boot delay or boot device order?

[dsidler]

I had the same problem in ESX 3.0.2, it was driving me nuts. Here's what I did. Deleted the hard disk, disconnected the CD drive from the guest. Booted. While it tried to PXE boot, hit Ctrl-Alt-Ins and F2 (or is it F9) a few times until it finally loaded the BIOS setup. There I selected to show the diagnostic screen at startup, which gives me the extra milliseconds I need to hit ESC when the guest boots, even with the hard disk and CD drive attached.

Dan