VMWare standalone convertor fails

[Sheridan]

I've been converting some old physical servers to VMs (ESXI6) and have got stuck on one particular 2008 R2 server - its only has a few roles and only has 250GB of disk space!

 

However it fails the conversion process every time, whether done locally or remotely - the error is pretty useless 'A general system error occurred: InternalError' and this happens at 98% every time.

 

VMWare only seem to mention boot.ini files (for Server 2003) or missing driver files (which doesn't seem to apply in this case as the error is such a vague one!)

 

This is a pretty standard HP Server running 2008 R2 with nothing odd about it - anyone seen an error like this before?

[mavhc]

Any ancient hardware, floppy drive, ide cd drive etc?

[Sheridan]

Just a sata CD drive - and 2 sata drives (that were mirrored but aren't anymore!)

[Sheridan]

I give up - looks like this machine will be a physical server forever more! I've tried everything and its always the same meaningless error

 

[3s-gtech]

Can you try converting to an intermediate file (using another tool) then converting that? I've had some success doing that. Can't remember what I used, perhaps Starwind or Disk2VHD. Edited July 29, 2016 by 3s-gtech

[Sheridan]

I'm thinking about using something like reflect to create a new image and then try p2v on that, but I need to find a free version that will do it!

[jezi55]

I've had same issues before and disk2vhd then I think I used a program called starwind to covert vhd to a vmx file

[Sheridan]

Cheers I might have a look at those next week.

[Sheridan]

The only error I can find in the log is two of these:

Failed to read request; stream:

 

That doesn't tell me much!

[Steve21]

Edit - Ignore that, noticed you said 98% which is generally another KB lemme find it.

 

Steve

Edited August 1, 2016 by Steve21

[MatthewL]

Presume you have rebooted the server that you are trying to convert and tried it again?

[Sheridan]

I've rebooted both the client and esx servers and to no avail. The common error that relates to 98% seems to only relate to Server 2003 and its boot.ini file. I'm looking at fresh install and restore from backup next!

[Sheridan]

I've now tried disk2vhd and starwind to convert it - and that vm just bsod's on boot. I've had to admit defeat on this one, now rebuilding a brand new vm and will have to try and restore a backup to it! A bit worrying as I've got quite a few physical servers to convert and this has taken a week of trying!

 

Thanks for the suggestions and ideas though - all worth a try!

 

Edit: Nope. This is one server that will have to remain physical - everything I try results in a blue screening vm! Even doing a full restore and backup using Windows Server Backup fails.

Edited August 3, 2016 by Sheridan