can I recover a windows 2003 guest OS that has a BlueScreen 0x0000007B

[obriensl]

we have a windows 2003 virtual, that was working, but is now cycling with the BSOD 7B, inaccessible boot device.

I think we had a glitch on the SAN LUN, but I can see all the files are still there. I tried using F2, and set to boot from CD first, and attached the WIndows 2003 ISO file, but that didn't seem to do anything.

Anyone have anything I can try, or am I totally out of luck?

these are development systems, so I don't have any backups.

VMWare system is ESX 3.5 update 1, Vcenter 2.5 update 2

[jayolsen]

You could connect the vmdk file for that server to another VM as an additional hard drive. Then via the help VM see if the disk is visable, check the boot.ini etc. Then disconnect the drive after troubleshooting and try again on the affected guest.

[continuum]

That VM was working before ?

Did you change the SCSI-controller - or added another disk ?

___________________________________

description of vmx-parameters:

VMware-liveCD:

[obriensl]

no, we didn't change or add anything. I think the LUN that we have the virtual disk on had some kind of issue, but I can't verify it. I'm afraid the vmdk file is corrupt, but I'm trying every trick to see if I can get around it

[continuum]

Do you have a BartPE ?

___________________________________

description of vmx-parameters:

VMware-liveCD:

[TomHowarth]

assign the Disk to another VM and see if you can a: seet the contents of the VMDK in the helper VM, b: check the contents of the Boot.INI to verify that is is pointing to the correct location.

If you found this or any other answer useful please consider the use of the Helpful or correct buttons to award points

Tom Howarth VCP / vExpert

VMware Communities User Moderator

Blog: www.planetvm.net

contributing author for the upcoming book "VMware Virtual Infrastructure Security: Securing ESX and the Virtual Environment”.

[continuum]

If the VM boots into a BSOD 7b the boot.ini is very very likely fine.

Next thing to check is existence of both symmpi.sys and vmscsi.sys in ..system32\drivers.

Next check

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\vmscsi

start-value

and

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\symmpi

start-value

and compare results with the vmx-parameter

scsi0.virtualDev

___________________________________

description of vmx-parameters: http://sanbarrow.com/vmx.html

VMware-liveCD: http://sanbarrow.com/moa.html

[dconvery]

If it is a issue with missing drivers or corrupted registry pointers, couldn't you just right click on the VM in vCenter and select "Reconfigure"? That will run converter against the VM.

Dave Convery

VMware vExpert 2009

Careful. We don't want to learn from this.

Bill Watterson, "Calvin and Hobbes"