Black screen after a P2V conversion of a Windows server using VMware Converter

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

After a successful P2V (physical to virtual) conversion of a Windows-based system using VMware Converter, the resulting virtual machine may experience these symptoms: 

• A black screen immediately after the virtual machine has completed the Power-On Self-Test (POST).  

• The guest operating system does not appear to boot.

• The logs do not contain any errors or messages that indicate a problem with VMware Converter or ESX.

Note: If the virtual disk (VMDK) is mounted from the problematic virtual machine as a secondary disk to another virtual machine, data will be observed as converted from the physical machine successfully.

 

Environment

VMware Converter 3.0.x
VMware vCenter Converter 4.0.x

Resolution

This issue occurs if the boot.ini file from the original source machine contains the parameter /burnmemory = <number>. This parameter reduces the amount of memory available to the Windows operating system by a specified amount.

 

For example, if a physical server has 8 GB of RAM memory and its boot.ini file is configured with the parameter /burnmemory = 4096, the RAM is reduced to 4 GB. As a result, the converted virtual machine has 4 GB of RAM memory. When the virtual machine is booted, the burnmemory = 4096 parameter that still present in the boot.ini file reduces the RAM another 4 GB, which leaves the virtual machine with 0 GB of RAM.

 

To resolve this issue, remove the /burnmemory = <number> parameter from the boot.ini file:

 

Note: For more detailed instructions, consult the Windows documentation.

1. Attach the virtual disk of the converted virtual machine to another virtual machine (known as a helper virtual machine).
2. When Windows is booted, remove the /burnmemory=<number> parameter from the boot.ini file.
3. Save the boot.ini file.
4. Remove the virtual disk from the helper virtual machine.

Note: A helper virtual machine is any virtual machine that can be used to add the virtual disk of the newly converted virtual machine to the inventory of the helper. This requires downtime of the virtual machine that is used as the helper.