Server 2003 doesn't detect new hardware after upgrade to hardware version 7

[alanprice]

We're in the process of upgrading our hosts to vSphere. To pilot the upgrade, we're upgrading our free ESXi boxes. I've been running into a problem with all of our Server 2003 machines, though. I upgrade VMware tools, upgrade the virtual hardware, and then login to the guest to allow it to install the "new" hardware. However, when I login in Server 2003, I'm never prompted about new hardware. I see a yellow bang in Device Manager for the VMCI device and then I can manually upgrade the network adapter drivers.

When I ran the upgrade process on the one XP guest we have running on the ESXi servers, it worked just fine. I logged in and it found a whole bunch of new drivers. It installed them and asked me to reboot.

I've tried forcing Server 2003 to check for new hardware, but that process doesn't find it either. Does anyone know what could be wrong? I suspect maybe some sort of security setting, but I would think that manually checking for new devices would override that. We have about 40 other Server 2003 guests to upgrade in the next two weeks, and there's no way we want to manually update drivers on all of them. I also know that I'm missing a lot of the upgraded drivers when I manually upgrade the VMCI and network drivers.

I haven't tested this on Server 2008 yet (no guests on the ESXi hosts), so I don't know if it's affected.

Thanks!

[curlet91]

Is this server 2003 R2? Which service packs are installed?

I've found Scott Lowe's upgrade process to work pretty successfully. Don't forget to snapshot.

Tim Curless, VCP

[alanprice]

Thanks for the input, Tim. I had come across that blog earlier. Unfortunately, that's not my problem. We also don't use the VMXNET or PVSCSI devices. The issue I'm having is that Server 2003 doesn't want to recognize the hardware like it's supposed to.

[admin]

I tried with Win 2k3 SP2 64 bit. After the tools upgrade and Hardware upgrade to version 7. It automatically detected the new devices. And I had not made any specific settings though.

[AndreTheGiant]

Try to do a manual installation of VMware Tools.

And check in device management if you have some device unknow or with a locked driver.

Andre