NT4 freezing after boot on ESX3.5 and VM server

[Curlyben]

We are moving our older servers to ESX for DR and admin.

One of the business critical servers is running NT4.

I have done an online convert, using the standard VM converter and mounted it in VMserver.

It boots, but freezes once disc activity ceases.

I have converted it for use with ESX with the OVF tool and the same happens.

I haven't as yet tried a direct convert into ESX as I'm waiting on my licences.

I have also tried a coldclone CD, but these images BSoD on boot so are pretty useless.

Any help or advice would be most welcome.

[kjb007]

You have to make sure the vm is using a buslogic scsi controller, as that is built into NT. LSI will require drivers to be pre-loaded into the OS, before it will boot without blue screening. Also, have you made sure to install the vmware tools?

-KjB

[TomHowarth]

Welcome to the forums,

just one quick thought, when you did the conversion did you lower the CPU count to single CPU from multi CPU, check the HAL to confirm you are using the correct one for the number of vCPUs.

Second thought, how many physical CPU's does the server hosting the VMware Server instance have.

Thirdly, remember that Windows zero's all assigned memory on startup and this can cause a resourse strain in Hosted environments.

Tom Howarth

VMware Communities User Moderator

[Curlyben]

KJB - scsi is fine.

Admittedly I didn't load vm tools on convert.

[Curlyben]

Tom - I haven't changed anything on the convert, simply ran it as default.

The vm image is only seeing 1 cpu and I can't change it to 2.

The NT server has 2.

The VM server is running 2 HT Xeons with 6Gb RAM and a ton of HDD.

Also the BSoD clone is giving Inaccessable_boot_drive, so I'm going to try a repair to the OS on that one.

[kjb007]

When you edit the vm settings, what scsi controller do you see? I've gotten this inaccessible boot device before when using a controller that wasn't available to the OS drivers.

-KjB

[TomHowarth]

As kjb007 says, an "inaccessable_boot_drive" usually relate to the inability to load the SCSI driver, when P2V'ing NT4 machines make sure that you use the Buslogic driver as this is default in NT

Tom Howarth

VMware Communities User Moderator

[Curlyben]

Cheers guys.

Buslogic is indeed the SCSI driver I'm using.

I'll try a repair on this and see if I can get any joy that way.

This still doesn't really explain why the warm convert freezes when disc activity ceases.