Workstation 11.1, Windows 7 SP1 x64, EFI, cdrom will not boot

[tekerjerbs]

Is Windows 7 x64 supported as an EFI guest OS in Workstation 11.1 with virtual hardware v11?

I recently upgraded from Workstation v9 to v11.1.0 build-2496824 under my Windows 7 SP1 x64 machine and tried creating a new Windows 7 guest using EFI and the installation media will not boot to get setup going.

The same media will boot on any BIOS type guests and I've tried Windows 7 and Windows 7 with SP1 slipstreamed all directly from Microsoft, not custom ISOs and none of them will work under EFI but will work under BIOS.  Similarly 2008 and 2008 R2 media will not boot either if EFI is used.

EFI VMs can successfully boot media from Windows 8 and up (2012 etc.) but not the previous OS generation.

I've tried a few different things, such as booting from the ISO from a local disk and network share.

I've tried all 3 variants of the dvd/cdrom: SATA, SCSI, IDE, including legacy mode which I don't think is actually working because it doesn't stay checked when I go back to edit the setting.

I've tried initializing setup from the EFI shell but the media is not even mounted under blk0 so I can't go any further.

My boot device options are all setup properly and I've tried forcing virtual cdrom boot on startup with no luck.

I have also tried going through the physical cdrom mapping rather than the ISO file and no luck.

My setup appears to be supported, however the interop/compatibility matrix doesn't point out BIOS vs. EFI support.  I know Windows 7 is UEFI-aware so it should work and I've seen posts where people have deployed it successfully under various Workstation versions using EFI emulation.

I also tried with virtual hardware v10

Both custom and typical install modes recognize the media but just can't seem to boot it up.

Should I be doing the USB boot method with some sort of customized media build?

Here's a snippet of the log file where it just seems like it's not picking up on boot even though it clearly sees the ISO there:

2015-03-27T13:33:51.427-04:00| vcpu-0| I120: CDROM: Connecting sata0:1 to 'D:\WIN7SP1X64ENT.iso'. type=2 remote=0

2015-03-27T13:33:51.427-04:00| vcpu-0| I120: DMG_Open: Not an unencrypted .dmg file (footer signature 0x00000000).

2015-03-27T13:33:51.427-04:00| vcpu-0| I120: DMG_Close: max cached entries 8

2015-03-27T13:33:51.427-04:00| vcpu-0| I120: CDROM: Checking initial physical media state...

2015-03-27T13:33:51.427-04:00| vcpu-0| I120: CDROM:  initial physical CDROM state is 1 (sense)

2015-03-27T13:33:51.427-04:00| vcpu-0| I120: PolicyVMXFindPolicyKey: policy file does not exist.

Just want to know if this is actually supported and if anyone else has this problem out there.

[dariusd]

Hi tekerjerbs, and welcome to the VMware Communities!

We've tested our EFI support all the way back to Windows Vista SP2 x64, and it should work in pretty much any of the configurations you tested.  Hardware version 7 and up should work; IDE, SCSI and SATA should all work; Booting the plain .iso file directly from Microsoft should work.

What's the size of the D:\WIN7SP1X64ENT.iso you are using?  Did you check its MD5/SHA1 sum against those on the Microsoft download page?

Cheers,

--

Darius

[tekerjerbs · Accepted solution]

It was approximately 3.5GB but I just downloaded a fresh copy from the MS VL site and it seems to boot up under EFI now.  Not sure how the previous ISO (and other 2008 ISOs) would work under BIOS but not EFI but this is good enough for me.

Thanks for confirming the support of the mentioned scenario though, I was having seconds thoughts about it.

[dariusd]

The EFI bootloader is stored on a different part of the disc from the BIOS bootloader.  It's entirely possible for a corrupt download to affect one bootloader but not the other.  Depending on the disc layout, it might even be possible for a truncated download to affect one of the two bootloaders but not the other.

Glad you got things working there!  Let us know if you have any further trouble with EFI support.

Cheers,

--

Darius