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.

For a free product, I’ve got to say this is an amazing piece of software and pretty bombproof if some basic steps are taken to maximize the chances of success with using it.  I hope to outline some basic steps you can take in order to up those chances, focusing on Windows 2000 and 2003. I can tell you I wish I had known a lot of this info previously when having performed some other clones…

Tip 1: Perform Live Migrations

The best way to perform P2V is by installing Converter on the source machine itself, then running the conversion while the operating system is up and running. So, a general process for this would be:

1. Install VMWare Converter on your source machine.
2. Reboot if necessary (Windows 2000) and then shut down all non-essential services.
   Shut down database servers, antivirus, the print spooler, Network Neighborhood, scheduled tasks, and so on. The point here is to get this Windows machine to the basics: server process, network connectivity, and the VMWare Converter services.
3. Start Converter and point it at the target VM host.
   Feel free to change disk parameters on the fly - you’ll find that if you’ve got a partitioned disk, you might want to break out those partitions to separate .vmdk files for better performance.

Tip 2: Remove Hardware-Specific Software Once the Conversion is Done

If you’re doing this process on a server, chances are you’ve got utility programs on there that are designed to interface with hardware that’s not going to be available on the VM. Some examples are IBM Director, Intel ProSet, and HP iLO and RAID array management tools. Keep in mind that I work on Compaq, IBM, and HP devices for the most part - post up any tips for Dell hardware if you have ‘em.

• If you have access to IBM’s support site, they make a utility called “dirclean” that helps to remove IBM Director, which oftentimes fails to uninstall.
• Intel offers a ProSet Uninstaller utility to help with removing ProSet - another utility the oftentimes fails to uninstall.
• Uninstall all HP utilities, including HP networking utilities.
  Go to the properties of an Ethernet connection, highlight the HP Networking Utility, and choose “Uninstall.” Reboot to complete.
• Even if you’ve uninstalled everything HP, get rid of any HP system shutdown services - in Server 2003, you can simply run this from the command line:

  sc delete sysdown
  sc delete cpqasm2

  In Windows 2000, you’ll want to delete those services from the reigstry (careful!)
  (HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services)

• Uninstall VMWare Converter.

Tip 3: Remove Hardware That’s No Longer There

This one’s a no-brainer once you think of it: get rid of hardware that the operating system has drivers for but no longer exists. But the way to get rid of that hardware is a little more hidden, no pun intended (you’ll see why). You can start up Device Manager in Windows by running devmgmt.msc from the Run menu, but it won’t necessarily show you everything you need to get rid of. To show all of those components, do the following:

1. From a command prompt, run

   set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1

2. Without exiting that command prompt, run

   devmgmt.msc

3. When the Device Manager comes up, click on View -> Show Hidden Devices. This should show you a whole slew of hardware that is slightly greyed out - it’s basically safe to remove anything that is greyed out, such as iLO Multifunction adapters, Intel Ethernet adapters, IBM RAID controllers, and so on.

Basically, these three major tips are what I follow whenever I P2V a server - and I’ve done roughly 50 of them over the last two months with a few hundred more to follow in the coming year. The failure rate, following these tips, should be pretty low.

Get a new system of ratings, or at least moderate the most stupid ones, Apple.

Sure, you can get a fuel-efficient hybrid car, but it’ll cost tens of thousands of dollars. That’s too much for the Top Gear crew, who’ve set out to build a 70MPG car for only $7,000.

They’re doing this by buying a 28-year-old Volkswagen Rabbit, driving it up to CWS Tuning in Saskatchewan, replacing the engine with a “modern, computer-controlled, turbocharged VW TDI engine” and then driving it down to UCLA where aerodynamics professor John McNulty will help, as they say “make the car more slippery.”

And for reference, a 2009 Toyota Prius achieves 48MPG and costs $22,720, while a 2009 Honda Civic Hybrid achieves 40MPG and costs $24,320. This thing will get 70MPG for $7,000.

It’s a downright awesome project, one that they’ll be covering step by step online via video and images. And they’re looking to get the internet to name it for them, so look for the Ballsmobile to hitting the road in the near future. We can’t wait.

Make sure you never upload anything you don’t feel comfortable giving away forever, because it’s Facebook’s now.

Queue the millions making FB groups denouncing Mark Zuckerberg, and so on. It now looks like the people at FB are taking a longer look at their decision:

Over the past few days, we have received a lot of feedback about the new terms we posted two weeks ago. Because of this response, we have decided to return to our previous Terms of Use while we resolve the issues that people have raised. For more information, visit the Facebook Blog.

If you want to share your thoughts on what should be in the new terms, check out our group Facebook Bill of Rights and Responsibilities.

Whether you decide to keep your Facebook account or not, you might want to get just a wee bit more paranoid about who can see your stuff. And thus the recommendation of an excellent article over at AllFacebook: 10 Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know. There were more than a few good suggestions in there that I had no idea you could do. Read it. Facebook it.

’cause I’m dead-set on an iPhone, and I’m dead-set against T-Mobile. But how cool of a feature is My Tracks?

Many GPS receivers require you to plug a separate device into a computer, install software, transfer, convert and upload your track to the web. With My Tracks, this has become a whole lot simpler. I no longer need to carry multiple devices when I go out for a ride, and I can easily share my rides on the spot with anyone I’d like by recording and uploading my track right from my phone and then sharing it out via email or even Twitter.

Granted, I think that Twitter is utterly stupid, but how useful would this be for motorbike rides, 4-wheeling, mountain biking, proving just how many tracks you got in last weekend at Mary Jane? So cool…

EDIT: The folks at TheAdventureLife.org have posted up their top 25 outdoor iPhone apps. Maybe “Trails”?

Fire up regedit and navigate to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Sidebar \ Settings

Create a new DWORD (not a 64-bit QWORD) named AllowElevatedProcess. Set that value to 1 and close regedit. No need to reboot or anything. Go back to Control Panel, and gadgetize-away.

Take this all with a grain of salt, as there are those that view this issue as a major security flaw: Sacrificing security for usability: UAC security flaw in Windows 7 beta.