Windows Server 2008 r2 in place upgrade to server 2012 r2

[eman00]

Hello Gurus - I have a test environment vmware host that i have a few windows server 2008 R2 on. I did a in place upgrade on one from 2008 R2 to 2012 R2 Datacenter that worked fine. Now i have a microsoft web server 2008 r2 that I am doing the same thing as well. This time i go thru the upgrade steps then it reboots to the 2012 Windows icon with the dots spinning below it. It does that for about a minute or two then I get the "Your PC ran into a problem and needs to restart. We're just collecting some error info, and then we'll restart for you." message. Then it reboots to the same screen and does the same thing again. I looked online but there is so many different answers to this and i hate to have to rebuild a 2012 web server and migrate everything over. I have reverted the upgrade back to a vm snapshot i took before the upgrade. My vmware tools is up to date and i have checked on the microsoft technet but it seems to that it could be on the vm side. Im not sure because i was able to do a in place upgrade on one machine fine until i got to this one. Any help or direction i should take on this? Thanks!!

[Ethernauta]

Hi, check the edit setting, correct "Operation Guest System" for the vm in "Options"

[eman00]

Yes, under "Guest Operating System" the version is correct 'Microsoft Windows Server 2008R2'

[Kahonu84]

I think he meant after the upgrade.

[eman00]

I reverted the snapshot back. Guess i will have to redo the upgrade and check. Thanks for the clarification.

[eman00]

So i re-upgraded and check Options. It still says Server 2008 R2 but i think because the install wasn't finish yet that is probably the reason. I get this screen below then it goes to a blue screen. Could this be the cause of VM or corrupted files?

[eman00]

The other message in the blue screen had "Inaccessible boot device"

[peetz]

Is the VM configured with a pvscsi adapter?

If yes then try changing it to "LSI Logic SAS" which is the default adapter for a newly created Windows 2012 VM.

[Greg Smid]

For anyone else that happens across this thread, peetz answer above worked for me! Changed the VMware Paravirtual SCSI controller to the LSI Controller and tried the 2008 R2 > 2012 R2 in-place upgrade again... worked like a charm. Thanks!

[anothervsphereu]

For what its worth, I tried injecting the pvscsi controller drivers into the 2012r2 installation media.  I ran into the same error messages above when trying to do an inplace upgrade of a VM that was booting with the pvscsi controller.   Not sure why that didnt work....

[crichmon]

So, just wanted to double (or triple)-check, you are saying that while the VM was still 2008, you changed the driver, and then started the upgrade?

For anyone else that happens across this thread, peetz answer above worked for me! Changed the VMware Paravirtual SCSI controller to the LSI Controller and tried the 2008 R2 > 2012 R2 in-place upgrade again... worked like a charm. Thanks!

[Greg Smid]

Hey crichmon, close but not quite... it's the virtual hardware of the VM itself you need to change, not a driver in the OS.

Before the OS upgrade, go into the VM settings in the vSphere Client. If the SCSI controller is set to "VMware Paravirtual", your Server 2012 R2 installer won't recognize the hardware because that driver isn't included in the Windows installer files... it doesn't get added until you install VMware Tools. So, you need to change the SCSI controller hardware to "LSI Logic SAS" instead (red box in my screenshot). Then just make sure that your disk(s) are connected to the new controller (blue box). Reboot your VM to make sure the disks are all accessible, and if everything looks good you should be able to do your upgrade. Once Server 2012 R2 is successfully installed, you can install VMware Tools, and finally change back to the Paravirtual SCSI controller if you like.

Greg

[crichmon]

Thank you, sir.  I was probably not clear, but I did know you meant in the the virtual hardware.  I just wanted to confirm the "Before the OS upgrade...".  Again; thank you, sir. 

[SBMSA]

GregSmid's post about changing to the LSI Logic SAS controller worked for me. However, I did have issues with the 2008 r2 not being able to boot after switching to the LSI Logic SAS controller. I'm glad I had created a snapshot prior to starting. After reverting back to my snapshot, it was necessary for me to first follow the steps in the following article in order to first get the LSI Logic SAS driver installed in Windows before switching it on my OS drive. VMware Knowledge Base

[hseale]

Downgrading to an old PVSCSI driver worked for me. One with a 2009 date.

pnputil -f -f oem2.inf

pnputil -i -a pvscsi.inf

I noticed servers with old drivers succeeded so stumbled in to this workaround.

[spatherton]

Hi. I know this has been answered by way of changing the underlying VM Hardware, but I have managed to decipher the issue using software.

The issue lies with the paravirtual controller as previously mentioned and injecting the drivers into the sources\install.wim file (using DOSM) of the Windows 2012R2 upgrade setup files ended up with continual "your PC ran into a problem" reboots.

What I found out was, that in the sources folder is also a "boot.wim" file. If you mount this using DISM and inject the VMWare drivers, the upgrade will proceed on the paravirtual controller without the issue. As the name suggests, the upgrade is using boot.wim to boot the upgrade installation.

Obviously you need to:-

• Copy the 2012R2 media to a (Windows 8\2012R2 or better) computer (to get the right version of DISM)
• Extract the VMWare drivers from the Tools distro
• DISM mount the wim images and DISM add the drivers
• Unmount and commit both wim images
• Compile your creation back into an ISO file