Windows Server 2012 with EFI fails to boot after HA reset

[DanielOlofsson]

Purposes of this thread:
1. A solution if someone else experiences this issue.
2. If someone has deeper knowledge of why this happens and/or how to avoid feel free to explain please.

The scenario:

I was rescanning a HBA via the Web Client (something that I have done many times before in the non-web-client without any trouble...) and lost connectivity to the ESXi host. No response from the ESXi at all and I noticed a PSOD... That's fine for now...

The bigger problem is that the VM's on the failing host moved via HA to my other ESXi's in the cluster, all of them started normally except my Server 2012s. Just the automatic startup repair wizard started and I couldn't do much from there... I tried some auto-repair stuff but they couldn't complete...

So I entered the command line tools and ran diskpart. No disks showed up at all. This is where it hit that I'm using the PVSCSI-drivers for my Server 2012s so I was trying to figure out how I could inject them from the command line but I tried another thing first...
I booted the VM on the Server 2012 ISO. Tried the Repair option, no OS found to repair so I selected a new install and loaded the PVSCSI-drivers from the pvscsi-floppy, aborted the install and tried the Repair option again. It said something like "Continue to boot Windows Server 2012" and viola! The VM restarted successfully and booted correctly into the OS.

All 3 Server 2012 VMs on the failing ESXi was affected. No Server 2008 or linux-machines where affected, however they don't use the PVSCSI-driver.

Anyone has an alter solution or maybe an explanation why this happened? Will this happen again if HA kicks in on my Server 2012s?

Is there any way to test or confirm this without killing a ESXi-host?

I'm running vSphere 5.5 and I don't think I had this issue with 5.0 or 5.1 but I'm not 100% sure cause I can't remember any PSOD or other outage running prior versions.

Hardware version is 9, EFI-boot.

Thank you!

[DanielOlofsson]

Hmm, when I restart any of these 3 Server 2012 VMs now the problem exists... I have to boot them by using the installer ISO.
Any hints of how to repair this?

[DanielOlofsson]

Finally I solved this... Seems like an error with the EFI-booting after a HA reset. I know EFI isn't supported with FT but I'm only using HA I can't find any place it says it shouldn't work.

This is how I repaired the corrupted WS2012 boots:

1. Boot WS2012 ISO, select new install, load the PVSCSI-drivers, abort the install and choose repair. (Only needed if PVSCI-driver is used for you bootdisk)
2. Choose Troubleshoot and then Command Promt
3. Run diskpart
     type list vol
     Locate the number of the small FAT32 EFI-partition, in my case nr 3
     type sel vol 3

     type assign

     type list vol

     Locate the letter assigned, in my case E:
     type exit

4. cd /d e:\efi\microsoft\boot

5. ren BCD BCD.bak

6. bcdboot c:\windows /l en-us /s E: /f ALL

7. bootrec /fixmbr

    bootrec /fixboot

    bootrec /scanos

    bootrec /rebuildbcd

Not sure if all these are needed... However it works. Note that the scanos and rebuildbcd shows 0 found OS.

8. Exit the Command prompt and select "Continue to start Server 2012" after that reboots should work fine again.