Migrated Windows 2003 server can't see storage

[iobrien]

Hi,

I am currently in the process of migrating a couple of Windows 2003 R2 Servers (I know, I know but upgrading is not an option) from VMware to Proxmox and i'm having trouble powering them on. The classic 0x000007b error is being thrown so I know it's storage driver related



Has anybody had this issue before and is there a way to install the VirtIO drivers on the server in VMware before migrating as that works perfectly well with 2016,2019 etc. servers.

I have got hold of some legacy virtio-win ISO's (0.1.49 etc.) but none of them have the executable to run and install whatever drivers you need like for later versions of Windows, just the .inf, .cat etc. files and i'm not sure where these could be installed/copied to.

Any help would be gratefully received as I am about to have a meltdown at this moment in time :-(

 

[VictorSTS]

Install mergeide.zip [1] on VMWare and reboot the VM. Then on VMware change disks to be connected to IDE. If it boots ok, migrate to PVE and make sure it is using IDE on PVE too. If it doesn't boot, you may need to use a temporary IDE disk to make Windows load the driver. It should boot ok afterwards.

Then, you may add another temporary disks to the VM but connected to VirtIO block (AFAIR, Win2003 dont have driver for VirtIO SCSI). This will allow you to install the driver, reboot, and detect the new VirtIO block disk. Then you may shut down the VM, remove the temporary disk and change the VMs disk(s) from IDE to VirtIO block.

Haven't used this procedure with VMWare, but have done it with Hyper-V and physical machines.

[1] https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/File:Mergeide.zip?ref=bra.live

 

[iobrien]

Install mergeide.zip [1] on VMWare and reboot the VM. Then on VMware change disks to be connected to IDE. If it boots ok, migrate to PVE and make sure it is using IDE on PVE too. If it doesn't boot, you may need to use a temporary IDE disk to make Windows load the driver. It should boot ok afterwards.

Then, you may add another temporary disks to the VM but connected to VirtIO block (AFAIR, Win2003 dont have driver for VirtIO SCSI). This will allow you to install the driver, reboot, and detect the new VirtIO block disk. Then you may shut down the VM, remove the temporary disk and change the VMs disk(s) from IDE to VirtIO block.

Haven't used this procedure with VMWare, but have done it with Hyper-V and physical machines.

[1] https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/File:Mergeide.zip?ref=bra.live

Thank you so much VictorSTS, worked like a charm