Physical to virtual conversion of Windows 7, failed boot

[coopooc]

I followed the guide found here: http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php/UnRAID_6/VM_Management#Physical_to_Virtual_Machine_Conversion and actually got farther than I expected. The drive was imaged fine, setup of the VM went as planned.

 

However, I can't get a clean boot. The windows error recovery prompt appears and I can't boot normally and the repair fails with a "The boot selection failed because a required device is inaccessible.

 

I could probably start with a fresh install and avoid all of this but it sure would be nice to use my converted version.

[jonp]

I followed the guide found here: http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php/UnRAID_6/VM_Management#Physical_to_Virtual_Machine_Conversion and actually got farther than I expected. The drive was imaged fine, setup of the VM went as planned.

 

However, I can't get a clean boot. The windows error recovery prompt appears and I can't boot normally and the repair fails with a "The boot selection failed because a required device is inaccessible.

 

I could probably start with a fresh install and avoid all of this but it sure would be nice to use my converted version.

 

More information is necessary.  What steps in the guide did you follow before you couldn't get a clean boot?

[coopooc]

Well, this is a bit irrelevant right now considering my array is currently shot but I'll be optimistic and keep troubleshooting.

 

I completed steps 1-4 here: http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php/UnRAID_6/VM_Management#Physical_to_Virtual_Machine_Conversion

 

Step 5 looked to be done within the VM so at that point I attempted to start the VM. That's when the Windows recovery prompt came up. I had read some advice from others to try to downgrade the "Machine" setting but haven't been able to attempt that just yet.

 

My Lubuntu install worked great but of course, it was a fresh install not a physical conversion.

[jonp]

One other thing you might try is assigning only one CPU to the VM during this entire conversion process.  Let me know when you get your array situation sorted and have time to test this whether or not that had an impact.

[coopooc]

Thanks, I have to redo it now anyway so I'll give that a whirl.

[coopooc]

Same issue with just one processor selected. Status:0xc000000e, The boot selection failed because a required devise is inaccessible.

[kode54]

Map the boot device as either SATA or IDE if that fails.

 

Add an extra empty 1MB image drive, mount it as virtio.

 

Boot the VM.

 

Configure the viostor drivers for the device that appeared for the 1MB virtio volume.

 

Shut down the machine.

 

 

You should now be able to remove that 1MB volume, and change the boot volume to virtio. The problem is that it needs at least one device before shutdown to already be converted, to register the driver to load at boot time.

[JonathanM]

The problem is that it needs at least one device before shutdown to already be converted, to register the driver to load at boot time.

Not totally true. You can force the install of the device driver without actually having the device installed. It's just generally easier to have an unknown device detected to get the driver wizard to search.

 

To force the driver install, you can right click on the root device of the device manager, and click install legacy hardware. From there you just walk through the wizard for all hardware and point it at the folder for the viostor drivers. Once it's done, it will show up in the device manager as not started, but the driver is installed and works fine once the "hardware" is changed from ide to virtio.

 

The advantage to the force install is that you can do it on the physical machine, before you do the image backup or move the drive. That way when you migrate to virtual, it "just works".

[coopooc]

Sorry, I wasn't very clear. I can't boot to that point. I've never been to a place where I could install drivers. It never gets that far.

[JonathanM]

Sorry, I wasn't very clear. I can't boot to that point. I've never been to a place where I could install drivers. It never gets that far.

You could force install the virtio storage drivers on your physical machine and then reimage.

[kode54]

The problem is that it needs at least one device before shutdown to already be converted, to register the driver to load at boot time.

Not totally true. You can force the install of the device driver without actually having the device installed. It's just generally easier to have an unknown device detected to get the driver wizard to search.

 

To force the driver install, you can right click on the root device of the device manager, and click install legacy hardware. From there you just walk through the wizard for all hardware and point it at the folder for the viostor drivers. Once it's done, it will show up in the device manager as not started, but the driver is installed and works fine once the "hardware" is changed from ide to virtio.

 

The advantage to the force install is that you can do it on the physical machine, before you do the image backup or move the drive. That way when you migrate to virtual, it "just works".

 

I manually installed the driver by right clicking its INF file and selecting Install, with no virtio volumes present. I shut it down, then switched the boot volume to virtio. It refused to boot, repeatedly.

 

I was only able to get it to boot after supplying a non-boot volume and forcing it to detect the drivers for it.

[JonathanM]

I manually installed the driver by right clicking its INF file and selecting Install, with no virtio volumes present.

I've never done it that way, I've always used the legacy driver wizard.

[coopooc]

I manually installed a bunch of them but not all. I figured I just needed the storage related ones for now. I did use the legacy hardware method and it seemed to work just fine.

 

Anyway, I'm re-imaging it right now, I'll report back.

[coopooc]

Well, something is happening now...just not sure what. Following all of your advice, I manually installed several of the drivers in the physical machine, reimaged it and then changed the volume to virtio instead of IDE.

 

I've now booted the machine and it appears to have progressed past the point where it hung before. I can actually see the animated Windows logo now with "Starting Windows", progress!! However, I can't tell if it's actually animating over the VNC connection but I think it is. With that said, it's been stuck here for a solid half hour.

 

Good news is, the processor is pegged at about 35% which given this is a 1 processor instance seems about right. Also, though not consistent, there is decent drive activity which can't be accounted for by any other processes.

 

I think it's running, just horribly slow. I'm hoping to wait it out and see if I can get to the desktop eventually to confirm it's operational.

 

It is running off of a conventional HD for the moment until I can wipe the SSD (the physical machine's drive) and add it as a cache drive.

[JonathanM]

I think it's running, just horribly slow. I'm hoping to wait it out and see if I can get to the desktop eventually to confirm it's operational.

 

It is running off of a conventional HD for the moment until I can wipe the SSD (the physical machine's drive) and add it as a cache drive.

Sounds about right, especially if the hard drive happens to be participating in the array. Running any VM's on array hard drives is excruciatingly slow for me, and the first boot on new hardware takes a while anyway to get all the driver adjustments recorded in the registry and whatnot. I also would recommend NOT having anything passed through until things settle out. If you get another boot failure, I'd try starting in safe mode, so it can get the hardware change processed without dealing with loading all your startup apps and services.

 

If I would have been thinking I would have told you to start in safe mode initially anyway, but hopefully it will sort itself out.

[coopooc]

No worries. I'm pretty patient. It's still stuck on the boot animation but the drive and processor activity has me optimistic so I'm going to leave it be for a few more hours. It is going on 4 hours now though so at some point I'll have to give it up and attempt to restart in safe mode.

 

Not an ideal drive configuration right now but hopefully it's only temporary.

[coopooc]

Quick follow-up. Waiting it out didn't work. Tried in safe-mode and it stalled on a specific driver related to my SATA add-on card which has been a pain throughout this conversion to Unraid. I tried to remove it in the physical machine but it still came up and stalled on the newly imaged VM.

 

I decided to rip my Windows Recovery DVD and mount it as an iso as the install OS to try a repair and magically my VM booted up just fine that time. Took that recovery ISO out of the VM and it wouldn't boot, added it back in again and it booted fine. Crazy! I have no clue as to why it's working but it's working so I'm just leaving that ISO in.

 

Also, successfully shrunk the VM disk from the 500 GB that was imaged to 200 GB using gparted. Then I truncated the image using some random "truncate" command I had never heard of. Now I have the original physical machine booting as a 200 GB VM on its original 500 GB SSD as the cache drive.

 

Quite the process but I've come away very impressed with the flexibility of Unraid and the options available to me now that I'm running an OS and VMs that are (nearly) completely independent of their underlying hardware.

 

Thanks for your help.