Windows 2008 can not be booted in vmplayer 5

[tjmgn]

Hi All,

I used vCenter Converter to copy Windows 2008 R2 to target machine.  Target OS is Windows 7 64 bit.

The conversion was successful.

Then I tried to start Windows 2008 in Vmplayer 5.  A black screen appeared and gave error "operating system not found".

So I tried to start virtual machine and entered its Bios setup.  I were able to find "Hard Drive" and "VMware Virtual SCSI Hard Drive (0:0)" on the top of the list.

What could be the cause of "operating system not found" error?

Thanks a lot!

[julienvarela]

Hi,

What is your scsi controller? it should be LSI Logic SAS . Can you check please.

Regards,

Julien.

[tjmgn]

Windows 2008 is installed under C:\Virtual Machines\windows server 2008 R2 x64

Under this directory, there is a file named "Windows Server 2008 R2 x64.vmdk".  In this file, I can find:

ddb.adapterType="lsilogic"

Does this look ok?  Is there anything else I can check?

Thanks!

[julienvarela]

Simply edit your VM's settings, and on your controller disk you will find the type.

But, if you can edit the vmdk to see this on a windows, what is the vmdk size? (From Windows View)

Regards,

Julien

[WoodyZ]

Boot the Virtual Machine from a Windows Live OS CD/DVD/ISO Image or use Kaspersky Rescue Disk ISO Image from Kaspersky Rescue Disk 10.  Note that if you use the later you need to temporarily remove the USB Controller from the Virtual Machine' Settings in order to avoid a Mouse Tracking issue caused by booting Windows Virtual Machine's from a Linux Live Distro.

What you need to do is check and if necessary set a value for a Registry Key and the KRD has a nice Registry Editor that automatically mounts the Windows Registry on the Windows system it's booted from.  The Windows Live OS CD/DVD/ISO Image may require additional steps to manually load the System Hive of the Windows Registry and then manually unmount it when finished, which is why I like using the KRD.

The target Registry Key is:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\services\LSI_SAS\Start

The Start Key should be of type REG_DWORD and should be: 0x00000000 (0)

Note:  If you used the KRD and temporarily remove the USB Controller don't forget to add it back.