Create a VMware image for Symantec Support troubleshooting

Products

• Symantec Products

Issue/Introduction

For troubleshooting purposes, Symantec occasionally requests a VMware image from a customer's computer that is experiencing the issue so that they can reproduce and further investigate the problem.

Resolution

Pre-Image Creation Preparations

1. Create an administrator account on the affected computer. Symantec Support will use these credentials while troubleshooting the image.
2. Document the username(s) and password(s) for the account created in step 1.
3. Ensure that you have a media device (e.g., external hard drive) with adequate storage to house the image.

Virtual Machine Image Creation

1. Convert the physical machine experiencing the issue into a virtual machine using VMware vCenter Converter Standalone.
   • This software will convert the physical machine into a virtual machine, for free. 
   • If this software is not already installed, download and install VMware vCenter Converter Standalone onto the machine which will be converted to a virtual machine. Follow the steps from the software to complete this process.
2. Copy the virtual machine image you created in step 1 to another computer which has VMware Workstation installed. Then, import the image into VMware Workstation.
   • If VMware Workstation is not installed, download and install VMware Workstation Trial.
3. After importing the virtual machine image into VMware Workstation, boot up VMware Workstation to make sure the image is functional and that you can logon to the desktop using the administrative account created for Symantec Support.
4. Verify that the issue you are troubleshooting can be reproduced within VMware Workstation.
   • If the virtual machine image does not reproduce the issue, you should contact Symantec Support before uploading the image as the issue may be hardware related.
5. Shutdown the virtual machine in VMware Workstation and then upload the virtual machine image to Symantec Support. Contact Symantec Support for instructions for uploading the image.
6. Provide Symantec Support with the credentials to logon to the virtual machine.

Note: Registration with VMware is required before receiving access to download the trial/evaluation software.