VMWARE ESX 4.1 Intalalion failed while loading the additional driver

[shahzadyusuf]

I am trying to install esx 4.1 and while it reaches to the point where it asks to load the additional drivers like NIC. I put the driver CD of NIC but it is not shown by clicking 'ADD' rather it gives message "The CD provided is not a valid VMWARE ESX driver CD". I went to the command mode issued the command ls -l /dev/cdrom but it says no such directory, please help I am very new to VMware.

[golddiggie]

Where did you get the driver CD? Does it actually contain the hardware drivers for ESX 4.1? What is the NIC that you have where the ESX/ESXi 4.1 installer doesn't contain the drivers already??

VMware VCP4

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[shahzadyusuf]

my NICs are realtek 8111D and TP-link TF-3200, i downloaded the linux drivers for them. Also there is no such device in /dev/cdrom directory it shows(even there is esx4.1 cd is there and the computer booted from it)

[AndreTheGiant · Accepted solution]

Welcome to the forum.

my NICs are realtek 8111D and TP-link TF-3200, i downloaded the linux drivers for them.

ESX/ESXi is not Linux and Linux drivers will not work on it.

You must have VMware driver, otherwise the device will not work at all.

As I know Realtek card does not work on ESX/ESXi...

Andre

[shahzadyusuf]

andre,

I am really in a mess , nothing seems to be working. Actually I downloaded an ESX 4.1 driver for Qlogic (though I do not have one) just ot check whether the installtion of ESX recognises this or not but no it does not recognises, it says the same thinf there is wrong CD on the drive , on the command prompt(by pressing ctrlAltF2) there is no such directory /dev/cdrom, or even EJECT command says the same thing. I am wondering that if it does not regnises the CD rom then how come it is booted and started the installation of ESX 4.1. So even if I bring a HCL compatible real NIC , the CDROM is not gonna recognise it.

[admin]

It's possible that your CD-ROM drive isn't actually compatible with ESX. The reason why it can boot into the installer is that the BIOS can detect and read it, but once it boots there is no actual ESX driver that works with it. You may want to try with a separate USB drive or try a network install.

You will need a working network device to complete the installation though. ESX uses the MAC address on the first nic to create the system UUID needed for VMFS. If you don't have a NIC the installer will prevent you from completing the installation.

--Patrick.

[shahzadyusuf]

or could it be the SATA controller itself. I changed two CDROM one IDE and another SATA none of them worked

[admin]

That's definitely possible. It's also not possible to update the SATA driver from the 3rd party driver mechanism to fix that, unfortunately. If you can't read off the CD-ROM, you can't update the driver for it even if you have a working version of the driver. In this case you need to repack the ISO with the offline bundle.

--Patrick.

[shahzadyusuf]

The disk/cdrom is being recognized now . I changed the SATA control mode

from AHCI to IDE and it worked. Thanks for all you support. Now I need to

buy esx compatible network adaptor, please suggest one which is available at

less cost.

Thanks again