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Shoome
Contributor
Contributor

XP SP3 Blue screen during boot

Hi All,

I installed VMware Fusion V 2.0.5 on my MacBook Air. I tried to convert my old XP PC with VMware Converter V4.

The conversion process seems to run smoothly but when I try to start my new VM in Fusion I get the following blue screen just after the "Windows is starting up" screen.

The blue screen disappears after a second and the VM reboots until the blue screen comes again.

Any ideas? I tried the conversion several times with several different settings. Always the same result:

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vvegas
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I would try starting the guest XP in safe mode. Then check Event Viewer to see if it has any useful info about the problem. If that doesn't help you pinpoint it, I would start by uninstalling any of the drivers that were specific to the original computer such as video, audio, and network interface cards or other system-specific hardware. On the Fusion side, I would set the settings there as simple as possible - 1 CPU, no 3d enabled display, etc. Make sure you provide adequate RAM to the guest.

Once you remove the old drivers, restart in normal mode again and see what happens. See if you can pickup the exact error message on the blue screen if it appears again.

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Mikero
Community Manager
Community Manager

Try editing your VMX file, and changing the adapter type from "ide" to "lsilogic".

When Fusion is NOT running:

Navigate to your home folder > Documents > Virtual Machines

Right-click (or ctrl-click) your Virtual Machine > Show Package Contents

Inside should be a <your virtual machine name>.vmx file

Right click it > Open With... choose TextEdit

There should be a line: scsi0.virtualDev = "ide"

Change that to "lsilogic"

Save it, close everything, try to launch Fusion.

Let us know how it goes 😃

-
Michael Roy - Product Marketing Engineer: VCF
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Shoome
Contributor
Contributor

Hi,

thanks for your help. I forgot to mention that I cannot even get into safe mode. I still get the blue screen when Windows loads "system32/drivers/mup.sys".

I checked the vmx file and found that I do not have a line with scsi0.virtualDev = "ide". I inserted that line but without success. Also a change to scsi0.virtualDev = "lsilogic" did not help.

I also tried to set up a new VM in Fusion and used the vmdk from the converted machine. Also here the same result.

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wila
Immortal
Immortal

Hi,

I'm afraid that made a typo when he suggested that line.

The scsi controller should not contain the value "ide"

An IDE controller is another device and not an edited virtual scsi controller..

Can you please show us your .vmx file? (attach it to your reply)

FWIW, most likely you are bumping into a 7B blue screen.

What this means is that your system can't boot from the disk as it is not having the right set of disk drivers. Your virtual machine is setup with a virtual SCSI adapter that windows XP doesn't have the drivers for. The solution is to either switch over to IDE (not recommended for performance reasons) or to add the drivers yourself.

If you are migrating a machine from physical to virtual and still have the original machine / machine around you can try to inject the correct drivers before taking the clone. VMware converter normally changes your virtual disk into a lsilogic scsi drive (you can check that in the generated vmx file, it is a plain text file with the virtual hardware configuration) Youc an also select to use a buslogic scsi adapter.

There's a virtual floppy with the required BUSlogic driver available from here: http://download3.vmware.com/software/vmscsi-1.2.0.4.flp

If you can boot into safe mode, then hit F6 during boot and load the driver, if not inject the driver in the original machine. OR boot from a recovery disk and install the driver then. While you are at it, uninstall any old hardware management software as it won't work anyways when virtual and might cause all kind of strange side effects.

A nice step by step explanation on how-to fix this. http://virtrix.blogspot.com/2007/09/vmware-installing-windows-xp-on-esx.html

and here's the link to an LSI driver: LSI 20320-R driver



--

Wil

_____________________________________________________

VI-Toolkit & scripts wiki at http://www.vi-toolkit.com

| Author of Vimalin. The virtual machine Backup app for VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation and Player |
| More info at vimalin.com | Twitter @wilva
Mikero
Community Manager
Community Manager

wila's correct 😃

-
Michael Roy - Product Marketing Engineer: VCF
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Shoome
Contributor
Contributor

Thanks, I will try when I am back from work and attach my vmx file. What would be the best way to insert the driver into the running original PC? I do not want to risk damaging anyting on the original machine without the clone working.

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wila
Immortal
Immortal

Hmm.. it has been a while since I've done that.

Most of the times it requires the hardware for the driver to actually be there, but IIRC then you can actually install the buslogic driver without it being physically installed.

But it's been so long ago since i've done that, that i'd better check. But i'll have to find a Windows XP virtual machine that uses an LSI driver for it to check, checking Unfortunately i do not seem to have one right now with just the LSI driver down here.

Somehow i also don't want to mess with my last physical windows XP machine (everything else is virtual here) as I would have to ghost/clone it for if something goes wrong (yes cannot afford it to stop running either) and I do not have the time to clone it. I do not expect anything to go wrong, but don't feel like experimenting with my production machine either, sorry.



--

Wil

_____________________________________________________

VI-Toolkit & scripts wiki at http://www.vi-toolkit.com

| Author of Vimalin. The virtual machine Backup app for VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation and Player |
| More info at vimalin.com | Twitter @wilva
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WoodyZ
Immortal
Immortal

First of all it would be nice to know what the BSOD Stop Error is and it would be nice to see the .vmx file that was created by Converter and also the .vmx file created by Fusion if you went that route. Additionally it would be helpful to see the Converter Logs from the Physical System's Temp File and you can get those by clicking Start > Run > type %TEMP% and click OK or press Enter.

Also when doing P2V there are a couple of thing I like to do... One is to make sure that Windows will automatically load directly to the Desktop without having to enter a password (this is on temporary until everything is working properly in the Virtual Machine) and I set Windows to not load anything other then base minimum using MSCONFIG thus hopefully eliminating any conflicts with what is proprietary to the physical machine especially if a Notebook. Once VMware Tools are installed then selectively bring back what's appropriate and then manually edit the Windows Registry to remove what shouldn't be there to allow MSCONFIG to not be showing disabled items.

As to the BSOD if it's is a STOP 7B type error then this may involve both disabling existing drivers and adding new drivers and if it cannot be done or don't want to do it on the Physical Machine then the Virtual Machine will need to be booted with the appropriate CD/DVD/ISO Image and the the drivers placed in the appropriate locations and the Windows Registry of the Virtual machine will need to have the correct information injected for the new drivers and removed for the old drivers. I usually use a custom built Windows Live OS CD/DVD/ISO Image and various utilities that can mount the correct Registry Hive and make the changes.

Anyway without the BSOD, .vmx files and vmware.log files and the Converter Logs it's not piratical to suggest to specific a course of action so if you would provide the information maybe a explicit and specific solution can be provided.

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Punchey
Contributor
Contributor

I know I'm resurrecting a pretty old thread, but I wanted to share my own experiences with this issue and how I resolved them (thanks to the posts above).

I used the converter to bring over an XP Pro install into a Mac Mini, and then ran into the BSOD 7B problem. I followed the above advice by mounting an XP Pro install CD image, accessed the VMWare BIOS (F2 REAL fast at the beginning), set the boot order to use the CD before the harddisk. Then I ran the Windows installer. At the point indicated in the instructions, I indicated to the installer that I wanted to use a SCSI driver. I then used the fip file supplied at one of the links above, mounted it as a floppy disk, then pointed the installer to it. I think proceeded to install Windows over my existing install. It scanned, found my existing installation, and then asked if I wanted to perform a repair installation (NOTE: not the same thing as using the repair console). I presed 'R' to repair, and it went through the usual XP install process. When it reboots, don't forget to unmount the floppy or else you'll get a boot disk error.

On the other end of all of this, I had a fully-functional, fully converted XP Pro install identical to my original system.

Thanks for the help, guys!

PetterW
Contributor
Contributor

Here's another resurrection of this old thread Smiley Happy

I had the same blue screen issue, running XP with Fusion 3. The repair routine was not the way to go for me though.

What I did was, I created a virtual machine using Parallels Transporter, and then had Converter convert it for me. This worked splendidly. Note that I didn't even start the Parallels virtual machine before Converting (I have Parallels, but since Transporter is a free download, this could be done without owning Parallels from what I can tell).

The reason I tried that was that I had previously had success converting that machine using Parallels. Of course, I couldn't know that VMWare wouldn't bluescreen on me after Converting, but that did not happen.

It seems Parallels is doing something right here where VMWare is totally off (I mean, why would the KB suggest a repair using a special SCSI driver, if that driver is regularly needed, why not inject it during Conversion...?)

Good luck to all of you, hope this helps someone.

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Engdev
Contributor
Contributor

Ancient thread, I know, but this just saved my bacon.

Thank you very much for the tips Wila and Punchey.

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