I'm trying to open a vm that I created using vCenter Converter on a Windows 2000 machine on my MacBook Air running Fusion v7.1.1.
When I cmd+o the .vmx file I simply get the error message "Error". What's the deal with these useless error messages and where do I go to find some useful information as to why I can't open this .vmx?
I can attach the .vmx if needed.
Hello
AFAIK Fusion creates a Windows VM to host Converter. The logs should be there (in %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\VMware\VMware vCenter Converter Standalone\logs). May be you should ask in a Fusion forum for more details.
However be aware that Converter does not support Windows 2000 since 4.3 (and by that I mean it can not convert W2K, not that it is just unsupported). I am not sure which exactly Converter version Fusion 7 uses but it should be newer than 5.0.
Regards,
Plamen
I am currently preparing to stand up a new View 6 environment. I currently have two environments: a vSphere 5.0/View 5.1 environment with some XP holdouts, and the current production vSphere 5.5/View 5.3 environment. I am attempting to move c. 10 XP machines that cannot yet be upgraded from the old environment to the new with the standalone converter. About 7 of the 10 have migrated just fine, but three of them refuse to do so. I don't even get beyond the first stage: the converter hangs at "Retrieving source machine information" for approximately 10 minutes, and then fails with the error "Unable to obtain hardware information for the selected machine". The process actually locks the vmdk file, forcing me to manually release before I can power it back on.
As I mentioned, it is just these few machines, which were originally P2V machines, that are failing. Unfortunately, due to their criticality I can just rebuild them. Hoping someone has seen something similar, or has some suggestions.
Hello
Can you upload the worker log for examination?
Also, can you try to P2V them as an alternative?
REG ADD HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters /v DisableTaskOffload /t REG_DWORD /d 1
Facing same issue, turn out it was a network problem
Hope it helps anyone, necrothread tho
I will locate and upload the appropriate log today. As for doing a P2V, when this was originally done the physical source was then destroyed. They have been virtual only for several years.
Attached is the converter log
Hi All,
I have an OId WindowsXP Machine which has 5 Dedicated Network Connections on a number of NIC Cards & one Internal Ethernet Connection. These Network Connections have Dedicated assigned IP Address's...The WindowsXP PC is now showing it's age & I need to Migrate it to a VM, as I need to run some dedicated Software, which will only Run on XP.
I have Built a Windows 7 Pro Machine, with the Right Number of Network Ports Installed with Dedicated NIC's & a one Internal Ethernet Connection.
My Question is hopefully Simple to Answer!!! What is the Best Way to make Sure that the Original IP Address's are retained, Do I Configure the New Physical NIC's on the Windows 7 PC to the OLD WindowsXP IP Address's & let the Virtual NIC's just Tunnel through to these NIC's??
I have used the Latest VM Standalone Converter to "Clone" the WindowsXP Machine & It has correctly Identified All the NIC's required, So I have ATM just left the settings in "Bridged" for the 5 Ethernet Ports, Is this the Correct setting?
Thanks for any TIPS or Suggestions that someone could provide....
I'm trying to do a really simple conversion from Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 to ESXi machine version 8. It seems to copy okay, but on the first VM boot it does an NTFS disk check and finds a bunch of errors.
All major services are stopped (APC Powerchute, Windows Deployment Services, Backup Exec Agent) and the antivirus uninstalled. chkdsk has been run on the source hardware and found no problems.
And yet after the migration I see this on first boot:
Checking file system on C:
The type of the file system is NTFS.
One of your disks needs to be checked for consistency. You may cancel the disk check, but it is strongly recommended that you continue.
Windows will now check the disk.
CHKDSK is verifying files (stage 1 of 3)...
The attribute of type 0x80 and instance tag 0x3 in file 0xe08c has allocated length of 0x1fec00000 instead of 0x1fecc0000.
Deleting corrupt attribute record (128, $J) from file record segment 57484.
Attribute record of type 0x80 and instance tag 0x3 is cross linked starting at 0x11a for possibly 0x1 clusters.
Some clusters occupied by attribute of type 0x80 and instance tag 0x3 in file 0xe120 is already in use.
Deleting corrupt attribute record (128, "") from file record segment 57632.
199936 file records processed.
File verification completed.
885 large file records processed.
0 bad file records processed.
0 EA records processed.
104 reparse records processed.
CHKDSK is verifying indexes (stage 2 of 3)...
262480 index entries processed.
Index verification completed.
0 unindexed files scanned.
0 unindexed files recovered.
CHKDSK is verifying security descriptors (stage 3 of 3)...
199936 file SDs/SIDs processed.
Cleaning up 8 unused index entries from index $SII of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 8 unused index entries from index $SDH of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 8 unused security descriptors.
Security descriptor verification completed.
Inserting data attribute into file 57632.
31274 data files processed.
CHKDSK is verifying Usn Journal...
Creating Usn Journal $J data stream
Usn Journal verification completed.
CHKDSK discovered free space marked as allocated in the volume bitmap.
Windows has made corrections to the file system.
70936575 KB total disk space.
50582732 KB in 152611 files.
97136 KB in 31274 indexes.
0 KB in bad sectors.
269927 KB in use by the system.
65536 KB occupied by the log file.
19986780 KB available on disk.
4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
17734143 total allocation units on disk.
4996695 allocation units available on disk.
Internal Info:
00 0d 03 00 59 ce 02 00 ac 1e 05 00 00 00 00 00 ....Y...........
d1 00 00 00 68 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ....h...........
00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
Windows has finished checking your disk.
Please wait while your computer restarts.
There is absolutely NO WAY that I am going to use this resulting conversion as our primary organization file server. Such corruption of the NTFS partition data is completely unacceptable. I have no way of knowing what "file record 57484 / 57632" are and if they are critical to the operation of the server.
Though I expect I already know what the problem is, and I cannot solve it by using VMWare Converter running on the Windows I'm trying to migrate.
Trying to copy a file system while it is in use is just inviting disaster because as you're copying data, something before or after wherever the copy is occurring may change so that the final copy result ends up being corrupted.
The only way to really prevent this mid-copy data corruption is to copy the partitions when they are not in use.
Could you upload log bundle?
Sorry for the delay, I was on a leave.
If this issue is still actual, pls upload the worker log. This is the client log which contains no valuable data.
Between making this change and switching to maximum data connections per task, I was able to increase the transfer rate from 5.23 MB/s to 70.95 MB/s. Thanks for the information.
POCEH, is there a way to directly send the logs to you? I don't know if they contain any sensitive information that could be used by remote hackers, but I'd hate to accidentally share that.
The source converter logs which I am putting all in a single ZIP, contain I believe three attempts to convert the source 2008 R2.
The first time the converter showed corruption, I hadn't run chkdsk on the source before conversion. I then ran chkdsk and it did find some stuff but nothing major on the source. The conversion attempts after that were done with chkdsk saying the source drives were okay, but still finding corruption on the target VM after conversion. Also did synchronize after convert with all attempts.
The last convert attempt I did not resize the volumes via converter during conversion, but was planning to do that later myself using PXE / WinPE and diskpart, if the conversion had no errors after completion.
.
Does anyone know how I can install or run VMWare Converter Standalone on WinPE?
This is the Windows preboot execution environment provided with Windows Deployment Services on Server 2008 R2. It is a severely hobbled version of Windows 7 or 2008 R2 with most system services stripped out, and has a forced 24-hour reboot to annoy people trying to use it as an unlicensed Windows desktop OS.
Due to WinPE being so severely hobbled, can't use MSI installers on WinPE because it lacks the necessary support. If I try to launch the VMWare Converter installer after booting into WinPE, it simply says "the required subsystem is not available" and quits.
I should clarify why I would want to do this.
The best way to clone a partition is when it is not in use. If no files are open, nothing is being changed while the source is being copied.
So this way the target machine I want to convert is simply treated as "data disks" to WinPE and has no files in use when cloned by Converter.
However Converter doesn't give the ability to choose which Windows partition installation to modify on the source server, to change drivers or anything else. It assumes the booted Windows OS (WinPE) is the OS to be converted and modified, when in fact I don't want to migrate WinPE at all, and if it is required to be copied, I will discard it as a temporary partition not needed on the final converted VM.
So, need to run VMWare Tools on the source machine before conversion so those drivers will already be present when the unmodified partitions are migrated by Converter.
Yes, you can send me your logs in PM, check the converter-worker logs are included, they are most important in this case.
It's not easy to run the Converter in WinPE environment, generally you need to copy installation on WinPE and correct paths and registry, Converter should run after that.
But running Converter in this way will copy WinPE OS not your real OS, as result your VM probably will not run.
Are look at 'Data to copy/Advanced' options? There are ability to change and exclude volumes, I don't understand "Converter doesn't give the ability to choose which Windows partition installation to modify on the source server, to change drivers or anything else."
The open files are not a problem for Converter because it uses VSS, for changed files during conversion there is a 'Incremental' option.
HTH
Hello
It would be better to ask this question in the Workstation forum.
At a first glance, this seems correct to me, but it probably depends on the requirements of the whole environment - why are these 5 static IPs, i.e. who communicates with them; are there any other requirements (like MAC address filters), etc..
HTH
Plamen
I would advocate Rosen's suggestion to use hot cloning. VSS ensures volumes' consistency, besides you can stop important services before cloning so that no important changes are being made during cloning.
However if you do need cold cloning, you may have a look at continuum's MOA (sanbarrow.com)
Sorry I've looked all over this VMWare Communities web interface, nowhere is there a "Send personal message" ability.
Clicking on your profile image does not reveal such an option to me.