I have converted both a win 2000 server image and a win 2003 server image which have both been running happily for over a year now. Both were creted using vmware workstation 4.5.2. the 2000 image boots up using virtual server 2005 but hangs on the starting windows screen and to 2003 image appears to boot then normally when you would get the 2003 splash screen its just black and has been for over an hour.

 

What have i done wrong ? any ideas ? I have tried booting from an OS CD in virtual server to try and run repair but it doesnt do that either

Did you do any pre-conversion work on the images? With Windows you have all sorts of drivers and the HAL to worry about in the conversion. Often times if you do a straight conversion of a Windows VM without addressing the HAL you get the problem you describe. Our tool doesn't address any of those gotchas, it really is just a file conversion.

If you did some pre-req work then there may be another problem but if not have a look at this post: http://vmtoolkit.com/blogs/paul/archive/2006/12/14/preparing-a-windows-vmdk-for-conversion.aspx which will point you to Chris Wolf's guidance on "How to migrate VMware virtual machines to Virtual Server" you will just need to go through part one (don't forget to make a copy of the original) then use our converter and see how it ends up. You will probably need to activate the 03 machine again.

Let me know if that helps at all.

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:: Paul

thank for that and i have done as you suggested and with some degree of success. the server now boots but restarts itself everytime it gets to the 2003 screen - i have left this for 30 mins and its still looping. this is using virtual server 2005 R2 - any ideas ?

 

in the meantime i am going to try the whole process again to test whether or not its me !!

my fault - as the image was of an sp1 2003 server i needed to use hal.dll and ntoskrnl.exe from the 2003 with sp1 cd - all is working well now - thanks for the help !

Glad that worked out, and thanks for posting the details.

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:: Paul

Ok, so I am running Windows 2003 R2 and I am still having the difficulties.  I have reviewed the instructions to prepare the source VM and applied them to no avail.  One thing I am noticing though is upon reboot after removing the VMWare Tools is that I cannot cancel the "New Hardware Wizard", it installs whatever it is wanting to install anyway.  I even tried to boot the machine into Safe Mode to see if it would cease installing the new hardware.  Near as I can tell, this is the only thing keeping me from a successful migration from VMWare to Virtual Server...

 

Anyone have any ideas?

 

TIA,

 

Don

Can you elaborate on the SP1 and the files you replaced? I.e., when/where/what?

I am still having issues with the black screen on a converted Win2003 and not sure what to do exactly

Sorry i didn`t read everything, found the solution!

Great Tool!!! 

Hi, I have the same problem, the hangs in a restart loop after making the conversion. It is a Windows Server 2003  R2 Enterprise Edition with SP1 machine and I expanded the hal.dll and ntoskrnl.exe files from the win2003 Enterprise Edition with SP1 cd, so I don't know what could go wrong. Any ideas? Thanks

Soledad 

spano:

Hi, I have the same problem, the hangs in a restart loop after making the conversion. It is a Windows Server 2003  R2 Enterprise Edition with SP1 machine and I expanded the hal.dll and ntoskrnl.exe files from the win2003 Enterprise Edition with SP1 cd, so I don't know what could go wrong. Any ideas? Thanks

Soledad 

 

Honestly, I don't think theres an answer.  I got this to work with a XP VMWare but receives the same error with a W2K3 R2 Standard with SP2.  It would be great if there were more information on how to proceed with different flavors of OS.

 
 

I have the blackscreen problem on bootup with Vista, after doing a conversion from vmdk to vhd.  Attempting to enter Safe Mode gets hung on crcdisk.sys -- Does the hal.dll replacement apply to Vista?  Where can I find the default hal.dll for Vista?

Thank you