P2V with Windows 2003 Server

[msharman]

I've been trying, in vain, to convert an existing Windows 2003 Server install into a KVM based virtual machine with proxmox.

I've followed, to the letter, severals times, the HOWTO about doing this but no matter what I do I still am unable to boot the image.

The vmdk boots fine in VMWare, but I'm unable to get the machine to boot from kvm. I've tried using the Windows recovery console to rewrite the MBR and partition boot sectors to no avail.

I've also made sure I ran the mergeide.reg registry file but this also seems to have no effect.

Since the orginal machine did boot from SATA so I wonder if this is the problem, however, from inspection in VMware workstation image the disc is attached as an IDE disk.

I'm at a loss what to try next to debug this problem, any ideas?

 

[tom]

I've been trying, in vain, to convert an existing Windows 2003 Server install into a KVM based virtual machine with proxmox.

I've followed, to the letter, severals times, the HOWTO about doing this but no matter what I do I still am unable to boot the image.

The vmdk boots fine in VMWare, but I'm unable to get the machine to boot from kvm. I've tried using the Windows recovery console to rewrite the MBR and partition boot sectors to no avail.

I've also made sure I ran the mergeide.reg registry file but this also seems to have no effect.

Since the orginal machine did boot from SATA so I wonder if this is the problem, however, from inspection in VMware workstation image the disc is attached as an IDE disk.

I'm at a loss what to try next to debug this problem, any ideas?

I did this many times without issues, so something must be different of your side but if you followed the guide it should work.

what windows 2003 version do you have? which hal?

and pls post you /etc/qemu-server/VMID.conf of the new KVM VM.

 

[msharman]

The operating system & HAL details:

Windows 2003 Server R2 Standard Edition (Service Pack 2)

The HAL (I think this is the right information from the Device Manager) is labelled "ACPI Multiprocessor PC" and has the following listed as the driver files:

C:\WINDOWS\system32\hal.dll
C:\WINDOWS\system32\ntkrnlpa.exe
C:\WINDOWS\system32\ntoskrnl.exe

This image orginally was from a dual core Pentium D, DELL branded server model was PESC430.

The disc image has two partitions with the first partition being a 64Mb DELL utility partition, then the second active boot partition has the OS installed.

In case this was a problem I tested a fresh Windows install (reformat 2nd partition, install via KVM) into this same partition table structure, and KVM had no problems booting from the 2nd partition.

The /etc/qemu-server/101.conf file is:

bootdisk: ide0
ostype: w2k3
memory: 1024
onboot: 0
description: The old Incubator server migrated into a virtual machine. Eventually this image will be retired in favour of several virtual machines one per project.
boot: cad
freeze: 0
cpuunits: 1000
acpi: 1
kvm: 1
ide0: wind2003-pve.qcow2

 

[jsquire]

Hi,

When I had similar problems I used the Hirens XP boot CD. In the registry tools it is possible to inject IDE / SATA mass storeage drivers into the unbootable HD.

This has allowed me to convert scsi based physical servers into IDE based KVM containers.

 

[msharman]

Re: P2V with Windows 2003 Server (SOLVED)

For eveyone's information I managed to get the virtual server booting.

I noticed that NTLDR wasn't even being run (no menu etc. just a "Error loading operating system") so I managed to workaround the booting issue by creating an NTFS boot floppy as per the instructions on MSDN: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/305595/

Then instructing KVM to boot from the floppy image. Everything worked fine after that.

My guess is that the QEMU BIOS was unable to load NTLDR from the disc because it was beyond the first 7G of the drive, but the VMWare BIOS was capable of doing that? (Perhaps someone more knowledgable may be able to confirm this?)

The orginal disc was 232Gb big, but why NTLDR ended up being unreadable only Dell knows I guess ;-)

 

[uwetr]

Hi,

Hi,

When I had similar problems I used the Hirens XP boot CD. In the registry tools it is possible to inject IDE / SATA mass storeage drivers into the unbootable HD.

got similar problems in virtualizing a Win2k3_x64 Server with Intel SCSI-Interface. :-(

I've downloaded the lastest verison of Hirens BootCD, which tool is used to inject the IDE-drivers exactly?

thanks in advance and best regards,
Uwe

 

[jsquire]

Hmmm. x64 not tried that yet! Does w2k3 x64 support 32 Bit storage drivers ? I'll try find sometime tomorrow to run up a vm.

JS

 

[jsquire]

In Hirens xp boot cd in the hirens menu there is a repair section which includes the tool to 'fix hdc'.


If this does not work then try UBCD4win which has the registry fix tools i mentioned before (dooh! I mentioned the wrong xp boot disc before). UBCD4win is a bit of a pain as the pointer does not track correctly.

In UBCD4WIN go to registry tools and there should be two options, I run both to be sure and it has fixed all my 00000x7 BSOD errors.


JS

 

[bwlinux]

Re: P2V with Windows 2003 Server (SOLVED)

For eveyone's information I managed to get the virtual server booting.

I noticed that NTLDR wasn't even being run (no menu etc. just a "Error loading operating system") so I managed to workaround the booting issue by creating an NTFS boot floppy as per the instructions on MSDN: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/305595/

msharam, were you ever able to create a permanent fix for this problem that did not involve booting from the floppy?

 

[msharman]

No we just kept on booting from a floppy image.

My thoughts are (this is only a guess) that the BIOS used for KVM doesn't support loading NTLDR from the middle of the disc; the physical machine was a DELL machine which comes with two partitions with the main operating system on the second one.

I recall from my early Linux experience something about early BIOS's having trouble referencing large discs and I wonder if the BIOS used by KVM has this problem?

Unfortunately I don't have the time to investigate this further.

 

[Bennieee]

here might be a way of p2v.
backup the system disk in a physical machine to an image, and convert the image to a virtual machine disk, and then use the disk
in a virtual machine.
maybe i didnt make it very clear, here's an article about converting to virtual machine disk.
hope it can help.

 

[jo512]

possibly the "ntfs-boot-sector-problem".

maybe worth to try solution at end of this thread:

http://forum.proxmox.com/threads/4928-Error-loading-operating-system

jo