VMWare Converter Failure: the STOP: 0×0000007B BSOD

By mike

So, on the heels of my post pointing out some tips on ways to increase the chances of successful physical-to-virtual conversions using VMWare’s Converter, you’ve decided to take the plunge and get rid of all those PowerEdge 2600’s you’ve got lying around.

Good for you! You’ve successfully finished a clone of your server’s physical hard drive(s), and the conversion process is almost done. BUT: At anywhere between 94% and 99%, the VMWare Converter console shows a failed conversion at reconfiguring your target virtual machine. So you switch to your VM and try to just power it on: BSOD. What now?

So, here’s something to check:

• Is the boot.ini file for this server correct? Does it point to the correct boot partition for your server?

Yup, it probably does. If you’re cloning from your physical server to the same drive letters and partitions, you’re probably looking at a SCSI driver problem. Sometimes, more often with Windows 2000 conversions, Converter fails to inject the correct driver for Windows 2000 to recognize it’s hard drives on booting up as a virtual machine. So, how to fix it?

You’ve got a couple of options: mount the .vmdk file in another virtual machine and copy the driver by hand to the c:\WINNT or c:\WINDOWS folder of your problem VM’s disk. Or, as I’ve learned to enjoy using if you have to do this repeatedly, you build a boot CD that does a lot of the work for you.

Following this guide at RTFM Education, you can create a very useful boot CD using BartPE Boot-CD, the correct VMWare drivers you’ll need, and a couple of “Fix-VMSCI” tools. It’s fairly simple:

1. Create the boot CD – you’ll want this ISO to keep around. Make sure to include the Fix-VMSCI tools.
2. Boot your failed VM with this CD.
3. When the WinPE environment comes up, simply run through the tools on the Start menu – these will automatically do things like fix your boot.ini and assign the correct partition to boot to. But most importantly for you at this moment in time, it’ll allow you to inject the correct SCSI driver into the VM’s Windows directory.

If you’re reading this right now with a client breathing down your neck, waiting for that VM to be up – I feel for you. But take some time, get this boot CD built up, and keep it around for a long-term fix when you (inevitably) run into this issue again.