No hard drives have been found - installation

[vpg]

I'm installing VMWAre ESX 3.5 and during installation i get the message 'No hard drves have been found. you probably need to manually choose device driver for the installation to succeed.' When i try to do it manually it does not show the driver in the list. When i try to install it is asks me to put the driver in /dev/hdb disk. I suppose it is asking to put it in DVD drive. But it does not allow me to open the DVD drive when i press the drive open button.

I've MSI K9N6GM Series Mother board with 'NVIDIA MCP61 Serial ATA Controller' and Western Digital SATA hard drive. I googled for the driver but couldn't find one. Any idea on how to fix this and go ahead with installation?

[mcowger]

You cant - you need a supported card.

--Matt

[TomHowarth]

Welcome to the Forums,

this is not the answer that you want to here, but you may be out of luck, you cannot just insert any old Linux driver into ESX and expect it to work. ESX is not Linux, you will need to get a supported I/O card read the HCL , alternatively visit www.vm-help.com and have a look at the White box and assorted hardware that has been got to work with ESX, but remember that anything built with this information will not in anywhy be supported or supportable by VMware

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Tom Howarth

VMware Communities User Moderator

[vpg]

I checked the supported hardware. MSI K9N6GM mother board with Local SATA is not supported yet. Will try the SATA controller card from supported hardware list.

Thanks for the pointer.