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I'm with Andrew on this one, happend to me a while back, had VMWare installed on a CF card, one time it just didn't boot anymore, the CF card had gone corrupt.<br />
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But this can also be the case when used regular HDD, so best bet would be to try to extract the configuration from the drive and replace it with a new installation.
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Hi,<br />
agree, if you know the ESXi host configuration, try not to loose too much time troubleshooting, you'd better reinstall, but don't forget to select PRESERVE VMFS when asked, or you will loose your existing VM.<br />
I suppose your ESXi installation device is a SD card and is not working anymore.
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Thanks Andrew, Uros &amp;&nbsp;Mr Tortur, I will give that a try. &nbsp;The boot is the primary partition of an on-board RAID 5 system. &nbsp;Would you suggest re-installing with the same version of ESXi or use the opportunity to install the latest version?
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I don't see issues in reinstalling the last vsphere 6 u1b..<br />
The only important thing is to go slowly and answer the main question properly : preserve existing vmfs datastore.
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Hi, I have a Dell PE R520 server that has been running ESXi 5.1 for 18 months with no issues until today. &nbsp;Basically, the machine will not boot but fails at different stages. &nbsp;First reboot showed the hypervisor recovery, then Loading VMWare hypervisor. It hung there for about 20 minutes then failed: /ohci_usb.v00: file not found. &nbsp;I brought the machine back to my office and on reboot gave:<br />
loading VMWare ESXi (so it got further than the first time) very slowly loaded files until it failed with: error loading /ata_pata.vo3 fatal error.<br />
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I would appreciate help with this. &nbsp;The machine is hosting 7 virtual server which I really do not want to lose.<br />
<br />
Thanks very much, Rod
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Hi, I have a Dell PE R520 server that has been running ESXi 5.1 for 18 months with no issues until today.  Basically, the machine will not boot but fails at different stages.  First reboot showed the hypervisor recovery, then Loading VMWare hypervisor. It hung there for about 20 minutes then failed: /ohci_usb.v00: file not found.  I brought the machine back to my office and on reboot gave:
loading VMWare ESXi (so it got further than the first time) very slowly loaded files until it failed with: error loading /ata_pata.vo3 fatal error.

I would appreciate help with this.  The machine is hosting 7 virtual server which I really do not want to lose.

Thanks very much, Rod

VMWare ESXi boot problem

VMware, a software company founded in 1998,  was one of the first commercially successful companies to offer x86 virtualization. The storage company EMC purchased VMware in 1994. Dell Technologies acquired EMC in 2016. VMware’s parent company is now Dell Technologies.

VMware has many software products that run on desktops, Microsoft Windows, Linux, and macOS, which allows the virtualizing of the x86 architecture.  Its enterprise software hypervisor for servers, VMware vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi), is a bare-metal hypervisor that runs directly on the server hardware and does not require an additional underlying operating system.

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