Windows 2008 R2 VM Failed to Start

[mvoss18]

You remember how in Server 2003/XP you could power down a VM and attach the boot VMDK to a helper VM as a secondary drive and read/write to it?  Then you could power down the helper VM, remove the VMDK, and the original VM would boot with no issues?

I tried this with Server 2008 R2 and ESXi 4.1 and now my VM is failing to start.  Upon boot, it goes into Windows Boot Manager and says:

Windows failed to start.  A recent hardware or software change might be the cause.  To fix the problem:

1.  Insert your Windows installation disc and restart your computer.

2.  Choose your language settigns, and then click "Next."

3.  Click "Repair your computer."

If you do not have this disc, contact your system administrator or computer manufacturer for assistance.

Status:  0xc000000e

Info:  The boot selection failed because a required device is inaccessible.

I've tried booting into the 2008 R2 ISO and doing some repair commands like StartRep, and bcdedit.  No luck...

I understand that this is really a function of Server 2008, and I am  just looking for some help in case I need to do this again.  In Server 2003 I would usually just have to play with the boot.ini if there was an issue, but I'm not sure how to resolve in Server 2008 R2.  I would think a lot of people have ran into this and know an easy fix.   

Please Help!

Thanks

[mvoss18]

OK, I was able to get the machine to boot using this article:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927392

I used Bootrec.exe /rebuildbcd

I'll still award points if anyone has a better way or can provide some insight.

Thanks!

[parsley]

Thank you for this post. I ran into the same issue today when trying to power on a 2008 R2 VM that I had previously attached the hard disk to another machine.

I had to do one extra step, when in the recovery console, the OS wasn't recognized. I had my SCSI controller set to paravirtual, so I changed it to LSI Logic SAS. Then the OS was recognized and I ran the same command:

bootrec /rebuildbcd

Still don't know why it happens, I would like to know that as well.

[joefp]

I had the same issue. Turns out 08 volumes (even boot) can be extended thru gui via disk management on same server you are trying to extend!  See here - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/325590

Check out -  How to extend the boot partition in Windows Server 2008

Wish I knew this 10 minutes ago. 

[rifleit]

I had the same issue and wish I had known about KB325590 10 minutes ago as well  I found and sucessfully used the following KB article http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2261423 to resolve the same issue.  It is related more to corruption due to backups, but the error described is exactly the same.  After verifying the three settings they talk about, I went with the step 7 option "Or, locate X:\Sources\Recovery, and then run StartRep.exe to start a quick automated startup repair utility that corrects boot environment values."

and it worked without any issues.  Thanks for all of your help.

[AlexUA]

Thank you guys,

got the same issue today. Tried:

this one: VMware KB: Windows 2008 R2 disk volume becomes read-only and fails to boot it didn't work and then:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927392

and got blue screen after reboot. But it let me to choose "Last known good configuration" option, and it finally resolved my problem.

Anyway thanks to everybody who shared his experience with that!

[mikeb8]

Thanks very much for the information about BOOTREC.exe /rebuildBCD..

This just saved a 2008 box that I blew up, trying to attach the HD to another VM in order to add some space to the C:\ drive.. I thought I read somewhere that would work.. but now that I read the OP's message, perhaps that just worked in 2003, and not 2008 (or 2012).. I just ran the .iso, followed the repair instruction -- and now its back online..

Very glad to have found this article.. !