Help with with VMWare VirtualCenter Server Service not starting

[Cobra617]

Hi all,

First....I am really new to VMWare so please excuse this novice question. I am hoping someone here can help as we made the mistake of purchasing our VMWare licenses through a 3rd party whose support is horrific. (I so wish we could have a VMWare person for support) Hopefully my explanation will make sense.

On our Virtual Center Server 2.5 (Windows 2003 Server Standard SP1), the VMWare VirtualCenter Server service will not start anymore. We believe this to be because the SQL account that it was using to connect to the SQL2005 database had its password expire. We didn't have access to the password (created by someone no longer here) so we had to have the account unlocked and the password reset (we were asked to do this by the support person). He also had us delete the System DSN (SQL Native Driver) and recreate it to reflect this new password. The VMWare VirtualCenter Server service still will not start. We can connect to the database with the System DSN just fine. When we test the connection it appears to connect to the DB without a problem. The SQL2005 logs indicate a password mismatch when the VMWare VirtualCenter Server service tries to start. So, basically we need to know how to make the VMWare VirtualCenter Server service use this new password. It looks like VirtualCenter is trying to use the old password. The support person told us that if the System DSN is setup with the new pw it should work, but this does not appear to be the case.

Just to re-iterate, everything was working fine until that pw expired. I am not happy that the support person (Not a VMWare support person) had us change the password for that SQL account. In hindsight, had we just unlocked the SQL account and not touched the SystemDSN I am guessing that we'd be fine.

Any help would be GREATLY appreciated.

[Dave_Mishchenko]

At a command prompt run vpxd.exe -p and you'll get a prompt to reset the password. vpxd.exe is the executable for the VC server and by default will be here for VC 2.5 - C:\Program Files\VMware\Infrastructure\VirtualCenter Server\

[Cobra617]

Thank you!!!! As trivial as this may have seemed, we have had this 3rd party (not some Ma and Pa shop either, this is a HUGE behemoth in the industry) messing around with us for 3 days and they still couldn't get it fixed. 3 days without the VirtualCenter was a little painful. I got fed up with them and hung up when they asked us to send them logs from the ESX servers for this problem. Unreal......Because of this incident, my employer has decided to drop purchasing licenses from this company and go directly to VMWare. So something good came out of this.