Booting a Windows virtual machine that was created from a P2V/V2V conversion fails

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• Booting a Windows virtual machine that was created from a P2V/V2V conversion fails.
• The console shows the error:
  
  A disk read error occurred, press ctrl+alt+del to restart
   
• This issue affects these Windows operating systems:
  • Windows XP
  • Windows 2003
  • Windows 7
  • Windows 2008

Environment

VMware vCenter Converter 4.2.x
VMware vCenter Converter 4.0.x
VMware vCenter Converter 4.1.x
VMware vCenter Converter Standalone 4.0.x
VMware vCenter Converter Standalone 4.3.x

Resolution

This issue can occur when a physical machine using an IDE controller is converted to a virtual machine.

 

Note: During conversion, it is recommended that you change from IDE to SCSI.

 

To check if the controller is IDE:

1. Right-click on the virtual machine a choose Edit Settings.
2. If no SCSI controllers are listed but you have hard disk(s), the disks are likely using the IDE controller.
3. To confirm the controller being used by your disk(s), select the disk. If it is IDE, you see the word IDE in the "Virtual Device Node" section on the right-hand side.
   
   Note: In other VMware products, you need to open the virtual_machine_name.vmdk in a text editor. Search for the #DDBddb.adapterType = section. The controller type is listed after the equal sign.

NOTE: VMware converter has reached End of Life and VMware will not support, however if customer has converter package they can use and reach VMware communities for help.  For more information regarding VMware End of life click here .

Additional Information

Adjusting the virtual SCSI adapter type in a VMDK file
Converting a virtual IDE disk to a virtual SCSI disk