"No Media" on boot screen when Installing Windows from ISO due to a failed conversion of the boot disk to a PVSCSI adapter.

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

• Boot screen will show No media even though CD/DVD drive is connected and correct ISO is selected.
• Virtual Machine will fail to boot from CD/DVD with the following error message on the Console :  
  • Attempting to start up from:
  • -> EFI Virtual disk (0.0)... No Media.
  • -> EFI Virtual disk (0.0)... No Media.
  • -> EFI VMware Virtual SATA CDROM Drive (0.0)... No Media.
    
    • -> EFI Network...

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 7.x 
VMware vSphere ESXi 8.x 
VMware vCenter Server 7.x 
VMware vCenter Server 8.x 

Cause

This is an expected behavior as ISO images are disks and have Partition Tables just like any other disk.
This is caused by the VM boot options > boot options Firmware not matching with the partition table for the ISO.

Resolution

• You must rebuild the VM because the boot options firmware cannot be changed after creation. The boot option you select for the VM must match the partition table used to create the ISO. If EFI is required for newer VMs, the ISO will need to be recreated using a GUID Partition Table (GPT) to ensure it is compatible.
• EFI uses a GPT so the ISO must also be created with the  GUID Partition Table.