Unable to determine Guest Operating System

[Alexcarioca]

I'm trying to copy my Windows PC to MAC using a USB drive but after choosing "this local machine" I keep having this error message.

My PC is Dell XPS running XP

Any help is welcome!

Thanks!

Alex

[paragsha]

Can you use the Converter to export logs and attach them here?

[Alexcarioca]

Thanks for your help!

Log is attached!

[paragsha]

These are not the correct logs. You should be attaching the agent logs.

[Alexcarioca]

Hi,

How do I get the agent logs?

Thank you!

[IamTHEvilONE]

To do so, simply open up your VMware Converter 3.x application and choose

File Menu > Export Logs

This will produce a zip file for which you can attach to your email response.

More specifically, the one we usually request is:

vmware-converter.log (capture a record on the system where Converter is installed)

- Contains information regarding the import/reconfiguration steps taken by the agent when converting the physical/virtual machine.

- Is available in the Source Physical Machine OS’s temp directory (C:\Windows\Temp\vmware-temp)

Please use the "Attach Files" option to provide the zip or log file, and can you also provide your boot.ini file? (c:\boot.ini)

Regards,

EvilOne

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[Alexcarioca]

Thank you very much!

Please see attched files.

[paragsha]

From the logs

No local disks were detected, so no local host config info.

Unable to read OS info from system disk:

Converter was not able to detect any disk devices on your system. What kind of disks do you have? Do you have RAID?

[Alexcarioca]

Fujitsu MHV2100AH

120GB 5,400 RPM speed

This is a regular Dell XPS M170 notebook...

[Mark_Bradley]

Hi,

Sounds like you need to add the drivers for the harddisk controller to the USB drive. ColdClone boots to WinPE and then runs Converter from there, so if WinPE cannot read the harddisks it cannot convert the machine. You can use either PETOOL or the manual method detailed in the link below to add drivers to WinPE.

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[IamTHEvilONE]

Mark, I wish it were that easy. According to the log files, it's the installer version since there is not (Boot CD) in the first line of the logs.

Log for VMware Converter Agent, pid=3752, version=3.0.3

Does this Dell XPS have an Intel Storage Matrix controller?

EvilOne

[IamTHEvilONE]

Also, We officially only support windows xp professional. As a point of interest, can you try something?

make a backup copy of your boot.ini file. Edit the current one to have the following:

timeout=30

default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

Try the conversion again. if it fails for the same reason, then revert to the old boot.ini.

Boot.ini is one of the ways converter detects the guest os.

EvilOne

[paragsha]

Hi Alex,

We use windows API to query the disks on your system. It seems to me like for some reason we do not get any disks. You can verify this manually by running this tool: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896657.aspx.

Look at the entries of \GLOBAL and if possible give a screen shot of it. You should be able to find entries PhysicalDriveX, where X is just the number of the drive (depending on how many drives you have). If these don't show up here...that would explain why we fail. Maybe the Windows APIs are not supported on this particular version (XP Media Center).

[Alexcarioca]

Hi,

Thanks to all of you trying to help me to make this migration to happen!

Before changing the boot file, here is the screen shot as requested by "paragsha"

It shows PhysicalDrive0

[paragsha]

From the information you have provided, this seems like a bummer to me. However I have seen similar problems where the Microsoft APIs don't always return the correct information. As was mentioned before it might be an issue with the particular flavor of windows that you have. If its a windows related bug, its possible that it got fixed in one of therehot fixes/service packs. So make sure that you have the latest hot fixes, service packs.

Unfortunately, I am not sure what else could be the issue here.

[Alexcarioca]

Hi,

Tonight I will try changing the boot file as suggested in a previous message...if does not work then I will need to buy a new copy of Windows XP and intall it in my new Mac.

Thanks!

[IamTHEvilONE]

after double checking, boot.ini is used later in the process to detect the operating system. around 97%, so even tho I said it before ... it may not make any difference where it is failing now.

If the Dell M1730 came with Windows on it, it's probably an OEM copy anyways. You'd need a new license key to activate windows even if you were able to virtualize it with Converter.

EvilOne