I have an old Windows Server 2003 we are retiring, which I am simply trying to make a VM of to preserve it in case anyone wants the old data off of it.
I'm using vSphere 5.1, and VMware Converter hates this computer. It constantly says a "general error occurred" trying to start the conversion, which apparently is due to an invalid partition table but this doesn't affect the machine, it boots fine with no errors.
I gave up on Converter and have moved on to trying to use an old Ghost32, and using WDS imaging PXE booting to get access to the machine and to the network.
This imaging process sort of works:
- Boot into WDS Windows 7 Capture image
- Shift-F10 to open a command prompt at the WDS capture dialog
- NET USE to attach to a file server
- Run ghost32 from the file server
- Replicate the old 2003 physical drives into a ghost disk image on the remote file server
- Done with old server.
In vsphere:
- Create a new empty VMware VM, for server 2003, with thin provisioned disk for the ghost image
- Boot VM, which uses PXE since disks are blank, boot into WDS Windows 7 Capture
- Shift-F10 to open a command prompt at the WDS capture dialog
- NET USE to attach to a file server
- Run ghost32 from the file server
- Apply the ghost disk image to the VM virtual disk
Except it fails, I get a STOP 0000007B because the 2003 Server doesn't have VMWare's VM drivers on it.
- I tried sysprepping before imaging, telling it to populate the mass storage list, and still STOP 7B
- Tried deleting the SCSI VM disks, and used the generic IDE VM disks, and still STOP 7B
Next I tried pre-installing VMWare tools onto the original machine running Server 2003, so the VMWare drivers will be present when I try making a ghost image a third time. VMWare Tools absolutely will not allow me to do this:
- "VMWare tools should only be run within a virtual machine." -> Exits.
- There is no apparent command-line switch to force the install of VMWare Tools
I am getting quite angry at this point. I have now wasted at least 6-8 hrs of trying different ways to get the moved Server 2003 to boot in a vSphere 5.1 virtual machine, but VMWare's migration tools are failing or blocking me every step of the way.
Is there a way to make this work, when the automated Converter fails for undefined reasons, and Tools obstinately refuses to pre-install its disk drivers onto the physical hardware?