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Alex TFlag for United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

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Migrating VMs from Free version of ESXi to Hyper-v

Hi Virtualization Experts

We have an old VMWare ESXi server running two Windows VMs (one running Windows server 2008 and the other running Windows 2012 server).

VMWare ESXi is version 5.1 and free license (I think).

I have a brand new server which is running Windows Server 2019 standard with Hyper-V role installed.

I need to convert the virtual machines on VMWare to Hyper-V machines.

The Microsoft Virtual Machine converter is a no go because ESXi is running free version 5.1.

Hyper-V host is Server 2019 standard edition.

Here is where I am right now.


1. The first VM has 4 disks as you can see in image one. VM Guest OS is Windows 2008 server.
2. All disks are set as  SCSI on vmware end.
3. Exported VMware machines using the "export to OVF" method.
4. Converted VMDK files to VHDX file using Powershell command.
5. I created a new VM on Hyper-v with Gen1 format and attached 4 disk as scsi disks.
VM boots up to flashing cursor
6. Changed disk type to IDE and machine starts up but fails to boot into windows and goes to startup repair
Startup repair fails to fix the issue itself and goes into kind of recovery mode.
7. In this mode, it asks me to login with Administrator account to which I don't have pw since this is a domain controller and I don't know how to even set the password of local administrator account on a domain controller.

How do I fix this guys?

I have matched all the rest of the VM config i.e. the RAM, vCPUs etc.

Please help !!!!
Avatar of Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)
Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)
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Microsoft Virtual Machine converter is end of life as well three years ago!

it probably does not work for 2019!

You could try the Disk2VHD method, or you could use Veeam Agent to restore to bare metal.

see here

HOW TO: Perform a Physical to Virtual (P2V) Conversion the easy way from a computer backup (image).

You can create a V2V, just pretend the Physical computer is the ESXi VM, and Virtual is Hyper-V.
The administrator password for ad DC is resettable using ntdsutil
https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windowsserver/en-US/a889816f-f148-4505-bb44-8fe2a42669bd/reset-directory-services-restore-mode-administrator-password

Commonly the original administrator password when the ad DC is created. See above once you set the ad recovery admin password, you would need to repeat your prior steps from the begining.
For the Administrator password that would be the Directory Services Restore Mode password. Reset it.
There is an old trick that works most of the times... (i think it never failed me but i am forgetting things)
So here it goes (go one at a time)
0a. Make a copy of your Virtual Machine (backup)...work on the backup
0b. Just uninstall everything related to Vmware...
0c . Make a full image of the VM ...using e.g Acronis or whatever
0d. Make a dummy VM on hyperV.. i guess the faster to match is HyperV-2008 svr & HyperV-2012 svr
0e. Restore the Image to the dummy VM
1.boot the Virtual machine with the cd of Windows (2008/2012)
2. Press R for the Recovery Console
3. choose your Windows Installation
Go to windows system32 folder by typping cd c:\windows\system32
Then enter the drive letter of cd-rom (usually d.. .but it could be something else)
At d: prompt type cd i386
Then type as follows
Expand ntoskrnl.ex_
c:Expand hal.dl_ c:
For each command you will take a notification for overwriting the original files.. we choose yes to replace the files.
Reboot the machine....it should probably boot normally. if not try to boot to Safe mode..just install the HyperV additions...or whatever they are called....probably everything is ok...minus maybe some Vmware leftovers
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Alex T
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In my first post.... in states...

or you could use
Veeam Agent to restore to bare metal.
(which in your case is the Hyper-V VM!)

and I list my EE Article....tutorial with step by step instructions to do the same thing, which you have discovered!!!!

I also wrote about it here...

https://www.experts-exchange.com/discussions/218197/Software-Hidden-Gem-for-FREE-see-within-if-you-do-P2V-V2P-V2V-you'll-want-to-read-this-Article.html