Powering on a virtual machine fails with the error: No bootable device was detected

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• When powering on the virtual machine, the Events tab in the vSphere Client reports a warning
• You see one of these warnings:
  
  • No bootable device was detected. A bootable device might be a CD, floppy, hard disk, or network device, as when booting with PXE.|0ATo install an operating system, insert a bootable CD or floppy and restart the virtual machine
    
    
  • No operating system was found. If you have an operating system installation disc, you can insert the disc into the system's CD-ROM drive and restart the virtual machine
    
• You see similar messages in the vmware.log file:
  
  <YYYY-MM-DD><time>| vcpu-0| I120: Msg_Post: Warning
  <YYYY-MM-DD><time>| vcpu-0| I120: [msg.Backdoor.OsNotFound] No operating system was found. If you have an operating system installation disc, you can insert the disc into the system's CD-ROM drive and restart the virtual machine.
  <YYYY-MM-DD><time>| vcpu-0| I120: ----------------------------------------
  <YYYY-MM-DD><time>| vcpu-0| I120: Vigor_MessageRevoke: message 'msg.Backdoor.OsNotFound' (seq 1983580) is revoked</time></time></time></time>

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi

Cause

This error message is displayed if an operating system is not installed in the virtual machine and an operating system installation disc is not inserted in the CD-ROM drive.

Resolution

Scenario 1 :

 

Insert the operating system installation disc into the CD-ROM drive, restart the virtual machine, and install the operating system. For more information, see General Installation Instructions for All VMware Products.

Scenario 2 : 

Issue could also occur because of a wrong boot order : 

• Edit Settings on the affected virtual machine
• Switch to VM Options column
• Expand Boot Options
• Select the checkbox "Force EFI/ BIOS setup : During the next boot, force entry into the EFI/ BIOS setup screen"
• Restart the virtual machine
• Once the virtual machine boots to EFI/ BIOS - set the desired Boot Order to boot from a CD-ROM drive 
• Save and exit 

Additional Information