windows 2008 services wont start including vmware tools

[beckhamk]

Today we were upgrading many vm virtual hardware from v4 to v7. We were not changing nics at this time, just updating to the latest hardware version. We snapped the vm and started the vm (power on) once windows wanted to reboot we did and it came back up. But here is the strange thing all the other vms had not issues but one did. We thought this was a vmware tools issue but we are not so sure as we reverted the snap and basically the next reboot, windows will boot up you can log in but half of the service that are set to start automatic are not started including vmware tools. No errors in the event log nothing. no network and when you try to start vmware tools or any of those other services they just end up timing out.

Has anyone seen this before. BTW: no matter how many times we revert the snap the same thing happens. We even restored from a full image back and the same thing happens. All of the other vms we have upgraded havent seen this issue. strange. Has anyone else seen or had a simular result.

[fejf]

Is the VM win2k8 or win2k8 R2?

Only reproduceable issue I had with win2k8 was with win2k8 R2 and VMware Tools installed and with enabled grafic-hardware acceleration. The VM sometimes got stuck. After deinstalling the VMware Tools or just setting the grafic hardware acceleration to none everything worked fine again. I have only tested this with R2.

--

There are 10 types of people. Those who understand binary and the rest. And those who understand gray-code.

[beckhamk]

This was a win2008 NON - R2 vm.

[bcetinich]

I have a VM with windows 2008 Standard SP2

Same symptoms

Error 1053 when trying to start any service including VMware tools service.

Trying to disable acceleration does not work

also trying to uninstall vmware tools fails as it does not seem like Windows installation service is running correctly

ip is working -- when trying to bring up network connections it takes forever

anyone else seen this or have a solution

thanks

[BollaertN]

Any additional thoughts on this? I appear to be having the exact same problem, but mine was a result of a power failure.

All of my Windows 2008 VMs came back up, but this one has like half of the Windows Services just not started. Also VM Tools won't start. I can restart and get into Windows, but it isn't particularly functional.

[AndreTheGiant]

Have you reinstall the VMware Tools and reboot the VM before upgrade to v7?

Are you using the last version of ESX/ESXi?

Andre

[advsysal]

Was this issue ever resolved? I have the same issue on a bunch of Windows 2008 (non R2) server instances after the ESXi, 4.0.0 server had a power failure. My 2008 R2 VMs seem OK, but my 2008 non R2 are in this semi-functional state.

[beckhamk]

We did get this issue resolved, but it wasnt a vmware or vmware tools issue. We had to contact MS support and do a bunch of things which i will need to review my notes to see what we did. I am out of the office and wont be able to check this till later tonight. I recall us having to change something in the registry for DTC i believe and once we did that we were ok or we reverted the snap and applied the reg fix before the reboot something like that.

Ill touch base later.

[beckhamk]

these are the notes i had about the services not starting......

I believe we had to revert our snapshot to before the reboot and make these changes and then things rebooted fine.

hklm (local machine, system - current controlset -> services

-> spooler - dependons service (remove http) click ok

-> msdtc - permissions - added everyone to the MSDTC (read only)

hklm (local machine, software - microsoft)

-> msdtc - added everyone (read only) permissions

-> ole - made a backup, deleted legacylaunch perm

Not sure why i had these two items below

RPCSS

http

[advsysal]

Unfortunately I didn't have a snapshot to go back to, and I think I have other dependencies that I need to find. I appreciate the quick response

[KevinSp]

I've implemented this fix to a restored snapshot and an existing machine both suffering the same problem. Worked first time. Thanks for the post.

[advsysal]

I did not have a snapshot.

I was able to get my instances working a bit better using the Windows 2008 security config wizard, but unfortuantely it does look like I will need to rebuild the servers to get them completely back. Luckily they were only development servers.

This seems to only be an issue with servers that are running Windows 2008 (non-R2)

[DanInNH]

Unfortunately this didn't work for me (I really had my hopes up).

>> hklm (local machine, system - current controlset -> services

-> spooler - dependons service (remove http) click ok <<

Did that.

>> -> msdtc - permissions - added everyone to the MSDTC (read only) <<

Did that.

>> hklm (local machine, software - microsoft)

-> msdtc - added everyone (read only) permissions <<

Did that.

>> -> ole - made a backup, deleted legacylaunch perm <<

Wasn't in my registry.

>> Not sure why i had these two items below. <<

Those items were the original value of DependOnService.

[Hi5]

Guys,

Any luck with resoving this issue?

We have the same issue with Windows 2008 non R-2 VMs. It happens after we restore from full VM backup

Thanks

[DanInNH]

I was able to solve this with help from VMware support. See http://communities.vmware.com/thread/283729?tstart=0

[Ytsejamer1]

I ran into this in a couple of my lab 2008 VMs...one of the three was fine, two were not.  A lot of my windows services would not start up like they normally would.  One in particular was the VMWare service.  The list of services not starting (from my chicken scratch notes):

Automatic Services not starting up when they should:

Application Experience
Application Host Helper
COM +
Distributed Link Tracking Client

MSDTC

Group Policy Client

IISAdmin
IKE...
IP Helper
IPSec policy
Network List Service
Network Location Awareness

NSI
Print Spooler
Remote Registry
Secondary logon
Server
Terminal Services
VMWare Tools
Windows Error Reporting Service
WMI
Windows Time
WWW Publishing
KtmRm
TPM Base

Windows Firewall

Windows Remote Management

Windows Update

I tried everything in this thread as best I could...i couldn't figure out where the MSDTC permissions were or how to set them...but it didn't end up being what worked for me.

I went into safe mode, removed the HTTP dependency from the spooler, disabled the VMWare service, and restarted.  All my windows services started up at that point.  I uninstalled the VMWare Tools, restarted, installed them again, restarted, and all was well with the world again.

VERY strange.

[TeeTime]

This worked for me, except I didn't have to use Safe Mode. I went into regedit to HKEY Local Machine > System > CurrentControlSet > Services > Spooler.  I remove the HTTP dependencies in the DependonService key.

I rebooted and now vmware tools starts.  This is strange that the is effects VMware tools like this.