VM fails to boot. What to do?

  • 21 July 2020
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  • Nutanix Employee
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Who can say they have never experienced a VM boot issue? We have all been there. Something quick and easy like creating a VM from scratch or powering up one after migration. Annoying but can be solved. On AHV the root cause may be hidden in one of the below:

  • Incorrect boot device selected.
  • Incorrect boot mode is selected: BIOS or UEFI. If the virtual machine was initially created in UEFI boot mode and then boot mode was changed to BIOS or vice versa, then VM will fail to boot.
  • VirtIO drivers are not installed in the guest OS - results in PSOD also known as blue screen of death.
  • VirtIO drivers used to be installed but are removed after a sysprep.

You may find verification steps and resolution in the articles below:
KB-9400 AHV | Troubleshooting Virtual Machine boot failures
KB-5436 AHV | VirtIO drivers may be removed after OS generalization (sysprep)
KB-5338 AHV | How to inject storage VirtIO driver if it was not installed before migration to AHV

 

More on the subject:

KB-5666 AHV | How to install VirtIO drivers for Microsoft Windows Server 2008

AHV Admin Guide 5.17: Nutanix VirtIO for Windows

 


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