Intel E7330 Xeon VMWare 64bit

[mdfields]

I am trying to install Windows 2008 64bit on a Dell PE R900 with 2 Intel E7330 Processors.

I am have made the recommended BIOS changes on the physical machine (Enabled VT and Enabled 64 bit support)

Prior to performing the above setup, I was getting a "Longmode" error when attempting to install Windows.

Now, I can get all the way through the "Load Windows" process during setup, but at the end I get the message "Attempting to load a 64-bit application, however this CPU is not compatible with 64-bit mode."

Am I doing something else wrong here?

[kjb007]

What OS did you choose when creating your vm? I'm running several 2008 using the windows 2003 enterprise 64 bit option. As long as you have VT ad EM64T enabled in the bios, you should be good to go.

If you log in to the service console, you can run 'cat /proc/cpuinfo'

If you see the line for flags showing vmx/svm is for vt, you should have 64 bit support if you see the lm flag.

-KjB

[asatoran]

I have made the recommended BIOS changes on the physical machine (Enabled VT and Enabled 64 bit support)

Did you power off the physical machine after enabling VT? I'm told that VT does not enable after a warm reboot. Must be a cold boot.

[mdfields]

When I ran the cpuinfo command, it did not show vmx/svm.

I have ensured in the BIOS that 64 bit and VT is enabled.

I also performed a cold boot of the machine (unplugged the power cords) after making these changes.

This did not work.

[admin]

Could you post your vmware.log file for the failing 64-bit guest?

[kjb007]

The svm/vmx flags are telling you that vt is enabled. It does not say anything about 64-bit. If you cat /proc/cpuinfo, in order for 64-bit to work, you should see 'lm'. Can you post your /proc/cpuinfo here?

-KjB

[mdfields]

flags: fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss tm nx lm

[mdfields]

Where can I find the vmware.log file at for this guest?

[kjb007]

The vmware.log should be located with the VM files.

I just checked the cpuinfo on my hosts where I am running 64-bit guests, and I do not see the svm/vmx flags either, but I have no problem running 64-bit. Very strange.

[mdfields]

Here is the vmware.log file

[kjb007]

Instead of Windows 2008, select windows 2003 x64

According to below article, the Intel 7330 is VT capable, but does not specifically mention 64-bit.

Very odd.

[admin]

The log file shows that your CPUs do have VT support. Perhaps the BIOS is not properly enabling VT on all cores?

Please download this ISO, burn it to a CD, and boot the host from the CD. It will tell you if VT has been enabled on all cores.

[mdfields]

Ran this and VT is enabled on all cores.

[admin · Accepted solution]

Looking more closely at the logfile, you have paravirtualization enabled:

Apr 21 14:03:35.011: vmx| DICT vmi.present = TRUE

Paravirtualization is only supported for 32-bit guests, and enabling paravirtualization automatically disables 64-bit execution. I'm not sure why there isn't a more informative message about what's going on.

Try disabling paravirtualization.

[mdfields]

Thanks jmattson. I disabled paravirtualization and that did the trick.