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metagroboliser
Contributor
Contributor

Beta 4.1 (49528) + Boot Camp = Partition preprocessing failed.

Folks,

I've just done a fresh install of 4.1 on a brand new MBP (2.2Ghz, Santa Rosa, OSX 10.4.10) with BootCamp 1.3 deployed on a FAT32 partition. Here is what I'm seeing:

\- First attempted launch of the BC VM -> the one time "preparing bootcamp partition" message pops up.

\- At the same time, Fusion seems to unmount the BootCamp parition (i.e. it vanishes from the desktop)

\- After churning for a while, I get "bootcamp parition preprocessing failed ... drivers for the bootcamp partition may not be loaded."

- If I go ahead with the launch, the VM is crashes and goes into an infinite reboot loop at Windows startup.

Anybody seeing this? Any help/ideas greatly appreciated.

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CJConline
Contributor
Contributor

I know that this might be a silly question but I assume that you had installed Windows on the Bootcamp partition first and then installed the Mac drivers for bootcamp before you attempted to launched the Fusion BC VM?

Message was edited by:

CJConline

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metagroboliser
Contributor
Contributor

Indeed. The BootCamp partition was fully functional, with an up to date XP SP2 install and the BC1.3 driver set deployed before I attempted to launch it in a VM.

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admin
Immortal
Immortal

- First attempted launch of the BC VM -> the one time

"preparing bootcamp partition" message pops up.

Normal.

- At the same time, Fusion seems to unmount the

BootCamp parition (i.e. it vanishes from the

desktop)

Normal.

- After churning for a while, I get "bootcamp

parition preprocessing failed ... drivers for the

bootcamp partition may not be loaded."

Not normal but not unheard of.

- If I go ahead with the launch, the VM is crashes

and goes into an infinite reboot loop at Windows

startup.

Expected if preprocessing failed.

As a first step, please attach or post the contents of "~/Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/Virtual Machines/Helper/naos-1.0.vmwarem/vmware.log" which may tell us why preprocessing failed.

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metagroboliser
Contributor
Contributor

Thanks for the response etung.

vmware.log attached.

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admin
Immortal
Immortal

Looks like i8042prt.sys wasn't found in WINDOWS/system32/drivers. This contains keyboard/mouse drivers that Fusion needs, but I'm not sure what would cause it to not be there.

jim.gill posted manual instructions[/url] for working around this, and he'd probably be best to answer further questions.

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metagroboliser
Contributor
Contributor

Thanks for your help etung.

Jim, any thoughts? Is the manual procedure the only option at this stage?

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jim_gill
Expert
Expert

The reconfiguration step was looking for the keyboard driver and it didn't find it. Had your system come up in a virtual machine, you wouldn't have had keyboard or mouse support without this driver, but that doesn't explain the infinite reboot. I haven't seen that before.

In the systems I've examined, the driver is located in the file sp2.cab in \windows\driver cache\i386. Do you have this cab file on your system? Is this installation of XP a "flavor", that is, might it be Media Center or Tablet Edition?

To get your Boot Camp partition running smoothly in a virtual machine we need two drivers: i8042prt.sys and intelide.sys. Normal preprocessing extracts these from the sp2.cab file.

Can you take a look on your system's \windows folder and tell me what .cab files you find (my system has 13 of them) and also if you have any pre-extracted copies of the two drivers?

You can search with the Search Puppy from your \windows directory, or with these commands from a command prompt:

cd \windows

dir *.cab /s

dir intelide.* /s

dir i8042prt.sys /s

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metagroboliser
Contributor
Contributor

Vanilla XP Pro SP2 install, patched to the latest MS updates. The installation medium was an XP Pro + SP2 slipstream CD. A similar installation on a Macbook + Beta 3 has no problems.

Here are the results from the windows directory and subtree search:

$ pwd

/Volumes/Boot Camp/WINDOWS

$ find . -name *.cab

./Driver Cache/i386/driver.cab

./pchealth/helpctr/binaries/pchdt_w3.cab

./pchealth/helpctr/binaries/hscsp_w3.cab

./pchealth/helpctr/binaries/hscmui.cab

./pchealth/helpctr/BATCH/hscmui.cab

./pchealth/helpctr/BATCH/hscsp_w3.cab

./pchealth/helpctr/BATCH/tshoot.cab

./pchealth/helpctr/PackageStore/instance_Professional_32_1033.cab

./pchealth/helpctr/PackageStore/package_1.cab

./pchealth/helpctr/PackageStore/package_2.cab

./pchealth/helpctr/PackageStore/package_3.cab

./pchealth/helpctr/PackageStore/package_4.cab

./SoftwareDistribution/WuRedir/9482F4B4-E343-43B6-B170-9A65BC822C77/wuredir.cab

./SoftwareDistribution/WuRedir/7971F918-A847-4430-9279-4A52D1EFE18D/muredir.cab

./SoftwareDistribution/WuRedir/7971F918-A847-4430-9279-4A52D1EFE18D/wuredir.cab

./SoftwareDistribution/authcabs/7971f918-a847-4430-9279-4a52d1efe18d/muauth.cab

./SoftwareDistribution/authcabs/7971f918-a847-4430-9279-4a52d1efe18d/authcab.cab

./SoftwareDistribution/authcabs/authcab.cab

Also, neither the intelide, nor the i8042prt files appear to be present on the BootCamp volume.

Thanks for your help. Please let me know if you need any other info.

Message was edited by:

metagroboliser

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jim_gill
Expert
Expert

I appreciate the fast and detailed reply. Preprocessing failed because your slipstreamed XP+SP2 install doesn't have the sp2.cab file. The preprocessing steps will need to account for systems like yours.

In the meantime, if you care to undertake the manual instructions I posted here http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?threadID=88285&messageID=665366#665366, replacing the reference to sp2.cab in step 1 with driver.cab, your boot camp partition should run perfectly in a virtual machine. Unity works with the Boot Camp partitions and makes it really nice.

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metagroboliser
Contributor
Contributor

Thanks for your attention to this. I'll attempt the manual procedure and report back with results.

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jim_gill
Expert
Expert

Recent versions of winzip understand the Microsoft .cab format. If you open up driver.cab with Winzip you can check that it contains the intelide.sys/i8042prt.sys drivers we're looking for.

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jim_gill
Expert
Expert

One more thing, please: if you could post back whether or not this fixes your problem; if it does, we'll update Fusion to account for your kind of XP.

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metagroboliser
Contributor
Contributor

Jim,

I was able to locate both the .sys files in drivers.cab and followed your manual procedure ... i.e copied them to system32, updated the registry, booted back into OSX and attempted the VM launch.

Unfortunately, the VM still fails to launch with the same symptoms ... preprocessing failure (as expected) followed by a stop error at the XP boot screen and an infinite reboot sequence. I'm attaching the log from this most recent run.

Thanks for your help so far. I'm looking forward to hearing where we can go from here.

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jim_gill
Expert
Expert

Thank you for posting the log because I can see where things went wrong.

My instructions in the referenced post had an error in step 2, when they instructed you to copy the files into the \windows\system32 folder. This was incorrect; the correct location is \windows\system32\drivers.

I am posting revised instructions here and reposting bootcamp.reg.zip as a convenience.

The infinite reboot is not an error in itself but is a byproduct of the preprocessing failure. What's happening on your system is that Windows cannot find the boot drive on startup (that's the purpose of the intelide.sys driver) and it issues a BSOD with stop error 7B "Inaccessible boot device". However, the default for Windows is to automatically restart after a blue screen, which it does, and then blue screens again, then restarts...

For reference, the setting for whether or not to restart after system failures can be reached from Control Panel as System | Advanced | Startup and Recovery | Settings. There is no real need to change the default in your case.

Here are the revised instructions for doing a manual Boot Camp preprocessing.

1) Step one is to extract the files intelide.sys and i8042prt.sys from \Windows\Driver Cache\i386\sp2.cab. Recent versions of WinZip can open cab files, and this is the easiest method. If you don't have WinZip, open a command prompt, cd to the \Windows\Driver Cache\i386 folder, and use the Microsoft expand program:

c:\Windows\Driver Cache\i386> expand sp2.cab -F:intelide.sys .

c:\Windows\Driver Cache\i386> expand sp2.cab -Fi8042prt.sys .

2) Copy the two files (intelide.sys and i8042prt.sys) into your \Windows\system32\drivers folder.

3) Download the attached 'bootcamp.reg.zip' file which updates the Windows registry to add references to the IDE, mouse, and keyboard required for the virtual hardware.

4) Unzip the attachment, then double click on the 'bootcamp.reg' file.

5) When asked to "Are you sure you want to add the information in C:(path to file) to the registry?", click Yes.

5) If successfully added, the Windows Registry Editor will say "Information in C:(path to file) has been successfully entered into the registry." and click OK.

6) Restart the computer and boot off the Mac partition.

7) Launch VMware Fusion and open your Boot Camp partition virtual machine, which should no longer blue screen or have issues with the keyboard or mouse.

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metagroboliser
Contributor
Contributor

Jim,

Thanks for conveying the corrected procedure. It did the trick. I am now able to launch the BC VM without incident.

Thanks for your prompt and effective assistance. In this respect, you are currently miles ahead of your competitor.

cheers,

Meta.

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PeteGingaNinja
Contributor
Contributor

I have the same problem and have followed your instructions, but yet it does not resolve the problem.

I have keyboard access now, but I still get STOP 0x7B.

So I re-installed Windows XP in the Virtual Machine and now that works fine, but now Boot Camp comes up with the same STOP 0x7B error!!

I can't win! I'm running a MacBook with 2GB RAM with Mac OS X Leopard 9A466 (WWDC '07 Build) and Windows XP Service Pack 2 Volume License.

Any ideas to get it to work both ways?

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canadoc1
Contributor
Contributor

Followed thes instructions but alas I still get the BSOd from my bootcamp partition

I am attaching a screen cap of the error

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genjo
Contributor
Contributor

Help, exactly the same thing is happening to me. When is VM going to fix this?

Description of Support Request = Using Version 1.0 (50460) When I try to run the Boot camp partition either directly or via Fusion I get the following message....

"We apologize for the inconvenience but…

Safe Mode….

Start Windows Normally….?

No matter what I do this screen recycles again and again. Same thing happens if I try to boot from the Windows XP CD. Once the boot cycle starts Windows seems to lose where the partition is!

By the way, I can only use my keyboard in VM Fusion

to select any one of the modes (Safe, Last, Normal)…

But they all recycle to the same screen.

What files did VMware Fusion move or change and how can I change them back so that the Boot Camp drive will again boot directly?!?

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admin
Immortal
Immortal

The only files we change are in the registry, where we add pointers to the Windows IDE, keyboard, and mouse drivers, and a run-once Tools install. Unlike Parallels, Fusion does not replace boot.ini, HAL.DLL, or other system files.

http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?messageID=708527&#708527

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