Win 10 VM drops into UEFI shell upon startup


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Whenever Win 10 VM is started, it first drops to UEFI shell, requiring manual intervention.

Immediately after the VM boot-up, black screen with text "Press any(?) key to...??" (currently it's hooked to low-res TV, and the margins are cut off, so can't read the text completely).

No matter what you do there, you still end here:

 

UEFI Interactive Shell v2.1
EDK II
UEFI v2.50 (EDK II, 0x00010000)
Mapping table
    FS0: Alias(s): CD7a1....
        PciRoot(0x0)/Pci...../Ata(0x0)/CDROM(0x1)
    BLK0: Alias(s):
        PciRoot(0x0)/Pci...../Floppy(0x0)
    BLK1: Alias(s):
        PciRoot(0x0)/Pci...../Floppy(0x1)
    BLK2: Blias(s):
        PciRoot(0x0)/Pci...../Ata(0x0)
    BLK3: Blias(s):
        PciRoot(0x0)/Pci...../Ata(0x0)/CDROM(0x0)
    BLK5: Blias(s):
        PciRoot(0x0)/Pci...../Ata(0x0)

Press ESC in <countdown> seconds to skip startup.nsh or any other key to continue.
Shell> _

 

Again, pressing ESC or any other key here won't do anything; need to type 'exit', after which land in BIOS:

 

Standard PC (i440FX + PIIX, 1996)
?c-i440fx-2.5

 

There I need to select 'Continue' from menu, and only then it boots to windows installation.

 

unraid ver unRAIDServer-6.2.0-beta21

 

Edit: could it be, that https://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=39493.0 is still valid, and hasn't been fixed in a year?

Edit2: fyi, IIRC, the issue went away after the windows was installed; this problem occurred only during initial vm startup.  So I passed that screen as described, and afterwards it was okay when the vm was rebooted.

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  • 3 weeks later...
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For the record, I have built at least a dozen win10 vms in the process of trying to get GPU passthrough working correctly. Here's what I have observed:

 

Usually no UEFI shell on startup. Once Win10 is installed (I've done Home and Pro), VM boots normally.

 

However, if I hard reset the vm a few times, something sometimes gets corrupted, and I begin to see this behaviour. In some cases, an exit and 'continue' from bios works, in other cases, it just loops over and over again and I wipe and re-install...

 

Not sure how helpful that is, but in my experience, it seems to be related to the hard resets... Maybe something is getting corrupted in the nvram?

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So i'm experimenting with restoring VM's from one unRaid install to a different one on different hardware.  My primary unRaid system is running 6.1.7, the experimental box is running 6.2.4.  I've never seen the issue described in this thread before with 6.1.7 which i've used to host various VM's for the past year, but as soon as i touched 6.2.4, i hit this issue. 

 

Someone earlier in this thread suggested that he only saw the issue when using the Windows 10 template, i saw it with Windows 10 and with Win 2012 server.  I just installed Windows 2012 server using using the Windows 7 template and the problem went away.

 

Typing exit, and then continue did not work for me.  It just goes right back to that Shell command prompt. 

 

If you're hitting this issue, try installing the VM using the Windows 7 template, or try an older version of unraid.

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I have much the same problem twice now, and both times from completely fresh VMs. 

 

My unRAID locked last night (I think related to the Radarr docker but thats another matter) and had to be rebooted. My Win10VM failed to restart and just displays UEFI sheell and (importantly) "map: No mapping found" so there is no Fs0: and no ability to get an bootx64.efi file running. It's like the EFI shell is wiped.

 

I'm really reluctant to wipe and re-do a 3rd time as it gets a crazy waste of time with all the config of Win10. Win10 ISO cannot repair this as its not a Win10 issue I think but related to the VM itself.

 

Any ideas? This happened 1st time on 6.3.5 RC3 and now on RC5 but I suspect nothing to do with RCs

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Hi There, I'm running MacOS HighSierra on a mid-2012 MacBook and I am trying to install Windows through the Oracle VM facility.
I have a similar problem as Tuxbass; I get the UEFI interactive shell:
 

BKL0: Alias(s):
      PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x1F,0x2)/Sata(0x0,0x0,0x0)
BLK1: Alias(s):
      PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x1F,0x2)/Sata(0x0,0x0,0x0)
Press ESC in <countdown> seconds to skip startup.nsh or any other key to continue.
Shell> _

I tried many solutions offered here and elsewhere, but when I get to BIOS to access boot manager, nothing happens.

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