Re: [fedora-virt] Restored Windows Server 2003 VM goes black

[Andrew Cathrow]

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Greg Scott" 
> To: [e-mail]
> Cc: "Hisao Taguchi" 
> Sent: Thursday, October 6, 2011 12:23:40 AM
> Subject: Re: [fedora-virt] Restored Windows Server 2003 VM goes black
>
> Hisao Taguchi may have found a great idea. Hisao pointed to this
> article:
>
> http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314082
>
> It describes a process to proactively load a different IDE driver to
> a Windows XP system before moving it to different hardware. This
> absolutely parallels the problem I need to solve – and I gotta
> believe I am not alone. I want to P2V a Windows 2003 Server with an
> uncooperative system disk driver. I’ve tried virt-p2v, the

What happened when you tried virt-p2v did it produce errors during toe conversion or did the VM just fail to boot?
> old-fashioned ntbackup and restore, and an Acronis trial download.
> So far, nothing works – and the whole challenge comes back to that
> virtio disk driver not being present in the source physical machine.
>
> If we could come up with a way to proactively install that virtio
> driver into a physical Windows Server host before P2Ving it, maybe
> we could solve P2V problems worldwide and it would be a huge step
> forward.
> Greg Scott
>
> From: [e-mail]
> [mailto:[e-mail]] On Behalf Of Greg
> Scott
> Sent: Monday, October 03, 2011 10:09 AM
> To: [e-mail]
> Subject: [fedora-virt] Restored Windows Server 2003 VM goes black
>
> I tried a P2V migration last week and here might be a better spot to
> document the results. I have an aging physical host running Windows
> 2003 Server and I want to P2V that host in to a libvirt VM. The
> physical host uses a Compaq Smart Array 532 Controller with a Compaq
> Logical Volume SCSI disk device. The logical volume is a RAID 5 set.
>
> I first tried using the new virt-p2v approach, but haven’t been
> successful. So I tried doing it the old-fashioned way. On a RHEL 6.1
> host, I built a libvirt Windows 2003 VM from scratch using a virtio
> system drive. Then, on the physical host, I ran ntbackup and backed
> up all the system drive files to a network share viewable from my
> newly provisioned VM. I also backed up the system state. From the
> 2003 VM, I restored the system drive files and system state and
> rebooted.
>
> When rebooting, the VM flashes a couple of POST SeaBIOS lines, then
> the console window goes black. No BSOD, just black. Virt-manager
> shows the VM is still powered on, but the console window just sits
> there, black, until I force the VM to power off. I tried pressing F8
> to see if I could get to a Windows boot menu, but this never worked.
> I have a hunch something is going on with the new system virtual
> drive and the driver for the old system drive.
>
> I can boot the VM from a virtual CD and launch the Windows recovery
> console, and from there I can see the Windows installation. The
> login uses the new password, so I think the ntbackup – restores did
> their jobs. I tried a fixboot and fixmbr, but neither of these did
> any good. I tried another ntbackup – restore, this time using an IDE
> system drive in my VM (the restore took 50 percent more time than
> with virtio), but this also made no difference.
>
> I ended up re-enabling the NIC on the physical host again and now I’m
> trying to come up with a plan C. Are there any other ideas I’m not
> thinking of?
>
> Thanks
> Greg Scott
>
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