Hello everyone,
I am trying to hot-P2V a Win8 64bit OS which came pre-installed on my new notebook (it's an OEM license so I don't have the OS installation discs and thus cannot create a VM from scratch).
Unfortunately, like many people before me, I experienced this error while reconfiguring the newly-created virtual hard disk.
I read that the cause of this problem is an inaccurate BCD configuration: VMware KB: P2V conversion using VMware Converter fails with the error: Unable to find the system volume, reconfigura…
This post states that I'm supposed to import the virtual machine to vCenter Server and repair the VM's BCD from there.
Unfortunately I do not own this software and tried to import the VM in VMware Converter and run "Configure Machine" to fix the BCD data but no, I get the same error.
I should also mention that I did NOT install VMware Tools on this VM.
I spent some time reading articles about what BCD actually is and I more or less understood WHAT to do but still need a hand on HOW to do it.
Comparing my BCD with my Control Panel --> Disk Management it looks like the partitions are laid out correctly:
the first is a Win rec. partition (400Mb), then you have the boot partition (260Mb) and then the OS partition (drive C:).
The Z: volume is merely a data partition where I put music and movies and was not included in the VM.
Finally, the D: volume is a Hewlett Packard rec. partition. - this was not included in the VM either.
The BCD says the {bootmgr} is '\Device\HarddiskVolume2', so it seems to mirror the Disk Management structure.
But I'm no expert at all so here I am, asking for help.
I am attaching VMware Converter's logs and screenshots of my Win8 BCD and Disk Management.
Apart from solving my issue I'm especially interested in understanding WHY this problem occurs so I can learn and be better prepared for the next time.
Thanks a lot for your help,
Regards.
Stef