Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Installing Windows 64bit on VMware ESX 3.5

I ran into a issue a while back when atttempting to install Windows 2003 x64 on VMware EXS 3.5. I ran into the following error:

"Windows failed to start. A recent hardware or software change might be the cause... File: \windows\system32\boot\winload.exe Status: 0xc000035a Info: Attempting to load a 64-bit application, however this CPU is not compatible with 64-bit mode."

The server was a Dell 2950 and I had Windows 2003 64x installed on it before I decided to to make is a VM Ware server. After digging a little bit I was able to find the issue.

In order to run a 64bit application on ESX 3.5 you must first enable VT extensions in the systems BIOS first.

  • Power down the server and boot into BIOS mode.
  • In BIOS go into Advanced Properties.
  • Enable VT Extensions.
  • Save your settings.
  • Cold boot your system. (This is important. A warm boot does not put VT Extensions into effect).
  • Go into VMware as usual and install your 64 bit OS.

5 comments:

Marvin Keene said...

thank you!

Unknown said...

Wade,

I have a desktop currently running Server 2008 R2 x64. I installed VMWare Workstation 7. Then I tried to install ESX 4.0. I got an error about VT not being enabled. I booted into BIOS and changed it to enable VT. Cold booted the server and was then able to install ESX 4.0.

I then went in and installed vSphere Client to access the server. I've booted ESX, connected to it through vSphere and then tried to install the same Win Server 2008 R2 x64 from a mounted ISO. It boots and starts the install process, but then I get the same "Attempting to load a 64-bit application, however this CPU is not compatible with 64-bit mode." error.

Any help is appreciated.

Wade Draper said...

Off the top of my head, I don't have any reccomendations. I will play around with it over the weeked and try to replicate the issue you are having.

Unknown said...

Any luck with this? Still have the same problem...

Anonymous said...

64-bit guest run on ESX from Vmware Workstation is not supported.

http://www.vmware.com/support/ws7/doc/releasenotes_ws7.html

Considerations for Running an ESX Guest

•Only 32-bit guests can be installed to run as nested virtual machines inside an ESX guest. These virtual machines can only be configured to use binary translation.