In late 2007, we bought our first IBM Blade Center (which I am very happy with) and with that move we also decided to do “boot from SAN” for all of our blades.  Just seemed to make sense that we wouldn’t put moving parts in a device that was designed to run so well without moving parts. 

At the time, we were implementing a new ERP system and several “hanger on” type applications, and Hyper-V (virtualization in general) wasn’t something that was supported by a lot of the software we were deploying.  So we have a lot of powerful blade servers, running a lot of low use applications.  I have managed to eradicate several of those wasteful installations, but there are a set that I am only now getting buy-in to virtualize. 

And today’s adventure begins with a Windows Server 2003 SP2 machine installed Boot from SAN on an IBM HS21-XM Blade server.

First attempt:

1.  Convert physical server

2.  Virtual machine name

3.  Scan System

Looks good..

4. Conversion options

we can try the defaults..

5.  Specify the processor and memory… 

6.  Select the host, path, network, start options, etc..

7.  The job starts, the machine gets copied over, and …

That try resulted in a blue screen loop.. 

Ok… time to try the Offline conversion:

1. Proceed as above but select the Offline conversion option at step 4.

2.  hmm..  conversion warnings… must correct to proceed..

Warning (13246)
No compatible drivers were identified for the device: Broadcom BCM5708S NetXtreme II GigE (NDIS VBD Client). The offline physical-to-virtual conversion requires a driver for this device.

Device Type: network adapter
Device Description: Broadcom BCM5708S NetXtreme II GigE (NDIS VBD Client)
Device Manufacturer: Broadcom Corporation
Hardware IDs (listed in order of preference):
B06BDRV\L2ND&PCI_16AC14E4&SUBSYS_03271014&REV_12

Compatible IDs (listed in order of preference):
B06BDRV\L2ND&PCI_16AC14E4&SUBSYS_03271014
B06BDRV\L2ND&PCI_16AC14E4
B06BDRV\L2ND

Recommended Action
Create a new folder under C:\Program Files\Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2\Driver Import on the Virtual Machine Manager server and then copy the necessary 32-bit Windows Vista driver package files for this device to the new folder. The driver package files include the driver (.sys) and installation (.inf and .cat) files. Check the device manufacturer’s website for the necessary drivers.

We don’t really need to do that right…

Had some trouble with that part…  finally figured out that the drivers that need to be placed in that folder are the “RIS” drivers. 

Try number 3 (or 30, I lost count)…

1. Proceed as try number 2, ignore warning because we did put the driver in there, and

Blue screen loop…

Hmm… maybe this is just not meant to be.  Did some more searching and found this article:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/robertvi/archive/2009/10/07/after-installing-hyper-v-integration-services-on-the-next-reboot-the-vm-displays-bsod-0x0000007b.aspx 

Basically, there are some people seeing the exact same blue screen that I was seeing, except this was after the install of updated integration components.  But I wasn’t installing integration components yet… or was I?

Ok so maybe it was getting that far and just “blowing up” after the install of the components.  Good thing about this being a P2V, I can go back to the source machine pretty easy and check the registry:

Looks like we may have an answer here.  Change the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Wdf01000\Group entry to be WdfLoadGroup instead of base. 

It is my guess, that this would have worked even with the online conversion option.

Now that the problem was understood, Microsoft and Citrix brainstormed on workarounds customers could apply while Citrix worked on an update to the ICA Client that would prevent the sharing violation. One workaround was to disable application prefetching and another was to write a logoff script that deletes the Ssonsvr.exe prefetch files. Citrix published the workarounds in this Citrix Knowledge Base article and Microsoft in this Microsoft Knowledge Base article. The update to the ICA Client, which was made available a few days later, changed the network provider DLL to 10 seconds after Ssonsvr.exe launches before returning control to Mpnotify.exe. Because Winlogon waits for Mpnotify to exit before logging on a user, the Logical Prefetcher won’t associate Winlogon’s accesses of the user’s hive with Ssonsvr.exe’s startup.

Mark’s Blog : The Case of the Temporary Registry Profiles

One of the REG_EXPAND_SZ values on the right is the UninstallString.  If you copy that value and paste it into the command line, it will politely ask:  Are you sure you want to uninstall this product?  If you are sure you want to uninstall it, go ahead and hit Ok.

If you want to get rid of both pieces of Forefront ( the Security State Assessment Service, and the Client Security Antimalware Service) you will need to find both registry keys and run both uninstalls.  There is a catch though…  the Client Security Antimalware Service has a value that looks like this: MsiExec.exe /I{436028CD-6476-4224-9274-8F0320F30FD1}.  To get it to uninstall, you need to change the /I to /X like this MsiExec.exe /X{436028CD-6476-4224-9274-8F0320F30FD1}.

In that spirit, I am going to show you one of my pitiful scripts (and this one is horrible, because I didn’t bother to clean it up after I worked out how to make it accomplish the desired goal.  So… here you go:

‘==========================================================================
‘
‘ VBScript Source File — Created with SAPIEN Technologies PrimalScript 2007
‘
‘ NAME: BorlandDBPathFix.vbs
‘
‘ AUTHOR: Michael Phillips , Brasfield & Gorrie, LLC
‘ DATE : March 11, 2009
‘
‘ COMMENT: This script is to change the value of 2 registry keys on a per
‘ user basis. It should set the value to be the correct system
‘ drive (c: or u:).
‘ It should also be noted that this script isn’t very pretty.
‘==========================================================================
‘Registry stuff
Const HKCU = &H80000001 ‘This defines the Current User Hive
Const HKLM = &H80000002 ‘This defines the Local Machine Hive
Const REG_SZ = 1
Const REG_EXPAND_SZ = 2
Const REG_BINARY = 3
Const REG_DWORD = 4
Const REG_MULTI_SZ = 7
vDebug = 1
Dim strComputer

strComputer = “.” ‘This computer is the “.”. If you want another computer, replace the .

Set oReg=GetObject(“winmgmts:{impersonationLevel=impersonate}!\\” & _
strComputer & “\root\default:StdRegProv”)

sGetPath
Sub sGetPath
Set oShell = CreateObject( “WScript.Shell” )
strSystemDrive = oShell.ExpandEnvironmentStrings(“%systemdrive%”)
‘* wscript.echo strSystemDrive
fGetRegistryValues strSystemDrive
End Sub

‘*
‘* This is what we are looking for:
‘* [HKCU\Software\Borland\BDS\4.0\DBExpress]
‘* @=”"
‘* “Connection Registry File”=”C:\\Program Files\\Common Files\\Borland Shared\\DBExpress\\dbxconnections.ini”
‘* “Driver Registry File”=”C:\\Program Files\\Common Files\\Borland Shared\\DBExpress\\dbxdrivers.ini”
Function fGetRegistryValues (vSystemDrive)
‘* wscript.echo vSystemDrive & ” is being passed as vSystemDrive”
oReg.GetExpandedStringValue HKCU,”Software\Borland\BDS\4.0\DBExpress”,”Connection Registry File”,strValue1
oReg.GetExpandedStringValue HKCU,”Software\Borland\BDS\4.0\DBExpress”,”Driver Registry File”,strValue2
strDriveLetter1 = Left (strValue1,2)
‘* wscript.echo strDriveLetter1 & strValue1 & strSystemDrive
strDriveLetter2 = Left (strValue2,2)
If strDriveLetter1 = vSystemDrive Then
If strDriveLetter2 = vSystemDrive Then
Else
fSetRegistryValues strValue1,strValue2,vSystemDrive

End If
Else
fSetRegistryValues strValue1,strValue2,vSystemDrive
End If
End Function
Function fSetRegistryValues (fValue1,fValue2,fDriveLetter)
‘* wscript.echo “Bad Letter is being passed ” & fValue1 & fValue2 & fDriveLetter
vLength1 = (Len (fValue1))-2
vLength2 = (Len (fValue2))-2
‘* wscript.echo “–strValue1 & vLength1– >” & fValue1 & ” ” & vLength1
strPathNoLetter1 = Right (fValue1,vLength1)
strNewKeyValue1 = fDriveLetter & strPathNoLetter1
fWriteStringRegistryValues “Software\Borland\BDS\4.0\DBExpress”,”Connection Registry File”,strNewKeyValue1
‘* wscript.echo strNewKeyValue1

strPathNoLetter2 = Right (fValue2,vLength2)
strNewKeyValue2 = fDriveLetter & strPathNoLetter2
fWriteStringRegistryValues “Software\Borland\BDS\4.0\DBExpress”,”Driver Registry File”,strNewKeyValue2
‘* wscript.echo (fDriveLetter & (Right (fValue2,vLength2)))
End Function

Function fWriteStringRegistryValues (fvRegistryKeyPath,fvRegistryKeyName,fvRegistryKeyValue)
If vDebug = 1 Then
‘* wscript.echo “Begining Function -fWriteStringRegistryValues-.”
End If
‘ This function takes input to write string values to the registry. Key must already exist.
oReg.SetStringValue HKCU,fvRegistryKeyPath,fvRegistryKeyName,fvRegistryKeyValue
End Function