Installing Windows Server 2012 in Workstation 9 or 10

[oldn07]

I am trying to stand up a Windows 2012 server inside either Workstation 9 or 10 for testing.

I have the same error that the pc needs to be re-started when the iso try's to fire up. I have tried different iso files with the same results as below:

Your PC needs to restart.

Please hold down the power button.

error code: 0x000000C4

Parameters:

0x0000000000000091

0x000000000000000F

The error causes my physical machines to bleep and the following message appears as well:

A fault has occurred causing a virtual CPU to enter the shutdown state. If this fault had occurred outside of a virtual machine, it would have caused the physical machine to restart. The shutdown state can be reached by incorrectly configuring the virtual machine, a bug in the guest operating system, or a problem in VMware Workstation.

Click OK to restart the virtual machine or Cancel to power off the virtual machine

I have tried restarting the virtual and phyiscal machines and no change with the error

I have checked my machines and the installs of VM Workstation should be fine as I have many other VM's built and running just not any 2012 of Win 8 machines yet.

I am running workstation 9 on a Windows 7 Professional with SP1 laptop with 16gb RAM and Workstation 10 on a Windows 7 Professional with SP1  installed on an HP Z420 workstation with 32gb RAM

The VM team here had the same problem inside the ESX 5.1 farm and just upgraded to 5.5 and the problem went away so wondering what the fix is for Workstation

[admin]

Install Windows Server 2012 as Virtual Machine in VMware Workstation

Posted by Bipin on February 6, 2013

Hyper V is one of the hottest feature of Windows Server 2012. You will definitely want to install Hyper V server role and play around with it. Installing Hyper V role in server 2008 in VMware Workstation was difficult until VMware released VMware Workstation 9. Here I will show you how to install Windows Server 2012 as virtual machine in VMware workstation 9 with Hyper V ready. So let’s get going.

Install Windows Server 2012 as Virtual Machine in VMware Workstation

Before installing Windows Server 2012 as virtual machine in VMware workstation you might want to make sure following things,

1. At least 2 GB memory or more for Hyper V and nested VM installation.
2. Processor that have Intel VT technology supported and enabled.
3. At least 50 GB hard drive space or more for Hyper V virtual machine installation.

I am installing Server 2012 on my laptop running core i7 2670 processor with 16 GB RAM and 750 GB HDD with Windows 7 Ultimate. Here are the steps. Open VMware Workstation application from desktop. I am running VMware Workstation 9.

Click File from the Menu and select New Virtual Machine

Here choose Custom option and click Next button.

Choose Workstation 9 as hardware compatibility and click Next button. Under guest OS installation option, choose install operating system later. Click Next button.

Here I will choose Microsoft Windows as guest operating system and Hyper V as version. Click Next. Now name the virtual machine and browse the location to store this virtual machine and click Next button.

Under processor configuration, I will select 4 cores per processor and click Next.

I will select 6 GB of memory since I will be installing Hyper V and virtual machines under it. After configuring memory click Next.

In network type option choose NAT so that you can use Internet within the virtual machine. Then click Next button. Under I/O controllers type leave the default, LSI Logic SAS. Click Next button.

In select disk option, choose create new virtual disk and click Next button. In disk type, choose SCSI and click Next button.

Now, specify the disk capacity. I will enter 90 GB so that I will have enough space to install virtual machines in Hyper V. Then click Next button. Browse the location where you want to save the disk file. Click Next button.

Now you can see all the information in one place. If you think something is not right then you can click back and edit it. Click Finish button. Now click edit virtual machine settings to configure installation file of Server 2012.

As you can see below picture, select CD/DVD under device and browse the location of ISO installation file of Server 2012.

After configuration click OK button and click power on this virtual machine. You can now start installing Windows Server 2012.

After installation completes you can start using Windows Server

[admin]

Does your physical CPU meet the requirements for Windows 2012?  Specifically, does it support CMPXCHG16B?

[admin]

You can check this with the Windows 8 Upgrade Assistant from Microsoft.  Download the tool from http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/upgrade-to-windows-8 and run it on your physical host.

[ruby12]

Hi

Welcome to the communities.

From error message it says most probably having problem with CPU ,

You need to CHECK BIOS settings and enable respective features of CPU.

There is no limit to courage.

[oldn07]

Hi

Sorry for not replying sooner but yes checked using coreinfo and processor is CMPXCHG16B compliant but still can't install Windows 8 or Server 2012 with the same error.

What else am I missing here as surely it can't be this difficult to stand up the vm's on hardware that is only a year old.

I have copied the coreinfo output below...

Coreinfo v3.2 - Dump information on system CPU and memory topology

Copyright (C) 2008-2012 Mark Russinovich

Sysinternals - www.sysinternals.com

Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-1603 0 @ 2.80GHz

Intel64 Family 6 Model 45 Stepping 7, GenuineIntel

HTT             *       Hyperthreading enabled

HYPERVISOR      -       Hypervisor is present

VMX             *       Supports Intel hardware-assisted virtualization

SVM             -       Supports AMD hardware-assisted virtualization

EM64T           *       Supports 64-bit mode

SMX             *       Supports Intel trusted execution

SKINIT          -       Supports AMD SKINIT

NX              -       Supports no-execute page protection

SMEP            -       Supports Supervisor Mode Execution Prevention

SMAP            -       Supports Supervisor Mode Access Prevention

PAGE1GB         *       Supports 1 GB large pages

PAE             *       Supports > 32-bit physical addresses

PAT             *       Supports Page Attribute Table

PSE             *       Supports 4 MB pages

PSE36           *       Supports > 32-bit address 4 MB pages

PGE             *       Supports global bit in page tables

SS              *       Supports bus snooping for cache operations

VME             *       Supports Virtual-8086 mode

RDWRFSGSBASE    -       Supports direct GS/FS base access

FPU             *       Implements i387 floating point instructions

MMX             *       Supports MMX instruction set

MMXEXT          -       Implements AMD MMX extensions

3DNOW           -       Supports 3DNow! instructions

3DNOWEXT        -       Supports 3DNow! extension instructions

SSE             *       Supports Streaming SIMD Extensions

SSE2            *       Supports Streaming SIMD Extensions 2

SSE3            *       Supports Streaming SIMD Extensions 3

SSSE3           *       Supports Supplemental SIMD Extensions 3

SSE4.1          *       Supports Streaming SIMD Extensions 4.1

SSE4.2          *       Supports Streaming SIMD Extensions 4.2

AES             *       Supports AES extensions

AVX             *       Supports AVX intruction extensions

FMA             -       Supports FMA extensions using YMM state

MSR             *       Implements RDMSR/WRMSR instructions

MTRR            *       Supports Memory Type Range Registers

XSAVE           *       Supports XSAVE/XRSTOR instructions

OSXSAVE         *       Supports XSETBV/XGETBV instructions

RDRAND          -       Supports RDRAND instruction

RDSEED          -       Supports RDSEED instruction

CMOV            *       Supports CMOVcc instruction

CLFSH           *       Supports CLFLUSH instruction

CX8             *       Supports compare and exchange 8-byte instructions

CX16            *       Supports CMPXCHG16B instruction

BMI1            -       Supports bit manipulation extensions 1

BMI2            -       Supports bit maniuplation extensions 2

ADX             -       Supports ADCX/ADOX instructions

DCA             *       Supports prefetch from memory-mapped device

F16C            -       Supports half-precision instruction

FXSR            *       Supports FXSAVE/FXSTOR instructions

FFXSR           -       Supports optimized FXSAVE/FSRSTOR instruction

MONITOR         *       Supports MONITOR and MWAIT instructions

MOVBE           -       Supports MOVBE instruction

ERMSB           -       Supports Enhanced REP MOVSB/STOSB

PCLULDQ         *       Supports PCLMULDQ instruction

POPCNT          *       Supports POPCNT instruction

SEP             *       Supports fast system call instructions

LAHF-SAHF       *       Supports LAHF/SAHF instructions in 64-bit mode

HLE             -       Supports Hardware Lock Elision instructions

RTM             -       Supports Restricted Transactional Memory instructions

DE              *       Supports I/O breakpoints including CR4.DE

DTES64          *       Can write history of 64-bit branch addresses

DS              *       Implements memory-resident debug buffer

DS-CPL          *       Supports Debug Store feature with CPL

PCID            *       Supports PCIDs and settable CR4.PCIDE

INVPCID         -       Supports INVPCID instruction

PDCM            *       Supports Performance Capabilities MSR

RDTSCP          *       Supports RDTSCP instruction

TSC             *       Supports RDTSC instruction

TSC-DEADLINE    *       Local APIC supports one-shot deadline timer

TSC-INVARIANT   *       TSC runs at constant rate

xTPR            *       Supports disabling task priority messages

EIST            *       Supports Enhanced Intel Speedstep

ACPI            *       Implements MSR for power management

TM              *       Implements thermal monitor circuitry

TM2             *       Implements Thermal Monitor 2 control

APIC            *       Implements software-accessible local APIC

x2APIC          *       Supports x2APIC

CNXT-ID         -       L1 data cache mode adaptive or BIOS

MCE             *       Supports Machine Check, INT18 and CR4.MCE

MCA             *       Implements Machine Check Architecture

PBE             *       Supports use of FERR#/PBE# pin

PSN             -       Implements 96-bit processor serial number

PREFETCHW       *       Supports PREFETCHW instruction

Logical to Physical Processor Map:

*---  Physical Processor 0

-*--  Physical Processor 1

--*-  Physical Processor 2

---*  Physical Processor 3

Logical Processor to Socket Map:

****  Socket 0

Logical Processor to NUMA Node Map:

****  NUMA Node 0

Logical Processor to Cache Map:

*---  Data Cache          0, Level 1,   32 KB, Assoc   8, LineSize  64

*---  Instruction Cache   0, Level 1,   32 KB, Assoc   8, LineSize  64

*---  Unified Cache       0, Level 2,  256 KB, Assoc   8, LineSize  64

-*--  Data Cache          1, Level 1,   32 KB, Assoc   8, LineSize  64

-*--  Instruction Cache   1, Level 1,   32 KB, Assoc   8, LineSize  64

-*--  Unified Cache       1, Level 2,  256 KB, Assoc   8, LineSize  64

--*-  Data Cache          2, Level 1,   32 KB, Assoc   8, LineSize  64

--*-  Instruction Cache   2, Level 1,   32 KB, Assoc   8, LineSize  64

--*-  Unified Cache       2, Level 2,  256 KB, Assoc   8, LineSize  64

---*  Data Cache          3, Level 1,   32 KB, Assoc   8, LineSize  64

---*  Instruction Cache   3, Level 1,   32 KB, Assoc   8, LineSize  64

---*  Unified Cache       3, Level 2,  256 KB, Assoc   8, LineSize  64

****  Unified Cache       4, Level 3,   10 MB, Assoc  20, LineSize  64

Logical Processor to Group Map:

****  Group 0

[admin]

Please post the vmware.log file as an attachment (use the advanced editor).

[oldn07]

Please see attached log file. All I have tried to do is build the VM, I get 3 physical pc beeps and the error message

[admin]

I see nothing unusual, except perhaps for what appear to be the remnants of a failed easy install.  Have you checked the SHA-1 sum of the ISO image against the one published on the MSDN site?

If easy install is failing, you might want to try a fresh manual install.

[dariusd]

We have a known issue in WS 10.0.1 where putting a virtual CD/DVD drive all alone on a SATA or SCSI controller can in some cases cause beeps.  Does it still beep if you change the SATA virtual CD/DVD drive to IDE, and then remove the SATA controller?  (To remove the SATA controller, you'll probably have to edit the .vmx file and change sata0.present = "TRUE" to sata0.present = "FALSE".)

I think the beeping issue is unrelated to the OS installation failure, but I'd be more than happy to be proven wrong on that score. 

--

Darius

[admin]

It looks like DEP (Data Execution Prevention) is disabled in your host's BIOS.  Windows 2012 requires DEP.  If it is disabled, you should enable it.