inaccessible_boot_device after p2v Windows 2000 Pro SP4 to Workstation 6.5

Question

I am using the latest VMware Converter Standalone to p2v a physical Windows 2000 Professional SP4 PC. The PC is a standard Pentium with IDE disk from circa 2001. The disk is 20GB partitioned logically into C: and D. It converts with no errors (I did both disks into one VMDK).

When I power on the VM in VMware Workstation 6.5 (or Vmware Player 2.5) it gets to the Win 2000 boot graphic then I get a BSOD with the classic 0x7B Stop error: inaccessible_boot_device.

Is there anything I can do to get the vm to boot? I am lost for ideas, normally p2v of a basic IDE pc works flawlessly.

I'm willing to put a bounty on this as I am trying to sort this out for a client urgently.

Solution 1

In instances where I've seen this before, I boot off of the Windows CD and choose to reinstall. It will then detect there's an existing installation and give you the option to repair it. Take that second repair option. You'll need to reinstall all the service packs again.

Solution 2

the reason this happens is the physical disk geometry has changed but the NTFS disk label is still using the old layout.

This blog post explains how to fix the issue on Linux while it's still a VM image. If it's too late for that, my advice is to get yourself a bootdisk like BartPE and run an NTFS rescue program.

Good Luck!

Solution 3

To be clear on the 'reinstall Windows 2000' you boot from Windows 2000 iso, don't follow the first Repair link, do an install, F8, then when it detects you already have Windows installed, do a repair from there. See http://support.microsoft.com/kb/263532 for details.

Comments

[Admin]

What version of the service pack are you running? There are "Rollups" with SP4.

[Chris]

The converter only gave me the option to clone volumes (volume-based clone), there was no option for the entire disk.

[Chris]

I don't understand. Why would the physical disk geometry change in the VM? It's never happened for Windows 2003 servers that I've P2Ved, I'm wondering if it's just a Win2000 thing.

[Chris]

I've just read the blog post - it's irrelevant here. I'm not resizing partitions, just creating a vm with target disks the same size as the source. No resize involved.

[TechnoTony]

Well it depends if you have changed the physical disk size or layout during the conversion. If that has not changed then I suspect it's corrupted your image in some way. Boot your VM with a rescue disk image and see what you can find.

[Kara Marfia]

This worked for me, as well. Fired up like a charm after the repair. I'm guessing there was a device driver misfiring.