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Hello, We have a server 2008 R2 workstation that won't boot. There are various errors depending on what i've tried, i'm looking for assistance to try other things and get this machine to boot. The obvious thing is whether the mode of operation on the drive changed from UEFI or BIOS. Booting the system using the windows 2008 R2 media, getting into the repair/command mode you would need to run the bootcfg/bcdedit to rebuild/reinstall the boot loader. There are many examples that can be found via search chkdsk c: /r to make sure this is not what causes the issue. The boot loader does not disapear.
Jump to Creating a Windows virtual machine - For Windows versions from Vista and 2008 Server, ACPI is. Will cause the guest to show an error such as: Windows Boot Manager Windows failed to start. -m 1024 -cdrom '/media/vm/win2008web-trial.iso' -boot d. If Vista or Windows server 2008 are run on a version. While boot up it displays BOOTMGR is missing. 7 Steps total Step 1: Boot from your Windows Server 2008 R2 x64 DVD. Step 2: Repair. Chose Repair my computer link at the bottom of the window. Step 3: Command Prompt. Choose 'command prompt' option. Step 4: If exist rename c: boot BCD bcd.old.
Make sure you did not install the os while another drive was plugged in or you are trying to boot now with another drive (including usb) is plugged in and that is the drive the system tries to use first to boot. David - i double checked to make sure the system reserve is active (it wasn't), i made it active and rebooted, and IT BOOTS. Oh no - in my excitement when i saw the standard windows bootup animation/scroll.
I assumed this was fixed - let me take a step back David - if you wouldn't mind - it actually booted yet again into windows recovery even though i diskpart'd the drive letters system=none, main=c:, after the reboot they reverted back. System is again C and the main data partition where windows is turned to D again so i'm still stuck, what should be windows booting is actually windows recovery booting. Something in bcdedit maybe? So far i ran: sfc /SCANNOW /OFFBOOTDIR=c: /OFFWINDIR=c: windows (while C was indeed the correct volume) 'Windows Resource Protection could not start the repair service' sfc /scannow 'There is a system repair pending which requires reboot to complete. Restart windows and run sfc again' (of course, we're not running windows, we're in the startup repair - rebooting doesn't change anything) backed up the contents of windows system32 config replaced them with the contents of windows system32 config re gback (same date/approx sizes) no change. Breaking in with F8, choosing: last known-good configuration = boots right into 'windows is loading files.'
- windows system repair safe mode = loads the first 3 files you're used to seeing, then goes right into 'windows is loading files' - windows system repair directory services restore mode = loads the first 3 files you're used to seeing, then goes right into 'windows is loading files' - windows system repair start windows normally = loads the first 3 files you're used to seeing, then goes right into 'windows is loading files' - windows system repair it feels like we need to tell it BOOT WINDOWS instead of boot repair. Not sure what led to the issue you are facing, but something must have it could have been something like an update that was interrupted.
You installed the OS on this one rather than a vendor? Usually, the system reserve would not have a drive letter assigned to it. At this point you've tried all thing that often fix a corrupted MBR/bootloader.
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I'd suggest if there is any data on this system, get it off. And run a repair install of windows (though not sure windows server 2008 should be used as a workstation). Using the backup imaging that windows 2008 has should be considered in the future when testing to avoid a situation such as this. Or use the hyper-v hypervisor and setup a VM on which you can test. Hi arnold, and thanks for joining i installed this operating system on this drive, it wasn't done by a vendor. The drive letter assignments are out of whack due to the repair attempts i'm sure i can put this drive into another machine and copy data off, but the goal is to get this machine booting again server 2008 shouldn't be used as a workstation, and isn't in this case, this hard drive is a terminal server that users log into to do their work the backup solution which was used in this case gave me back the hard drive from backup, and it is virtually attached to a vmware VM right now (which is how it was in the first place before any failures). David - followed your steps without error: successfully scanned windows installations.
Total identified windows installations: 0 the operation completed successfully rebooted: still goes to windows recovery environment arnold: of course we have the ts licenses in our microsoft account and can stick the users onto a temporary server, but we're really after all of the installed programs that are on this hard drive. Reinstalling those programs will be a huge undertaking as they're quite complex, licensed specifically to this machine, involve several databases and odbc links to/from other places. Of course we can relicense everything and reinstall everything, but getting this to boot should be far simpler i've only tried this using the same server 2008 R2 installation DVD that installed it in the first place, hadn't considered trying something else like a windows 7 dvd or windows xp dvd. That is the difficulty, without identifying what led to this issue, the straight repair as David referenced should have solved a straight bootloader issue.
In the case here there is something else that is breaking it, a suggestion to look into rolling back based on restore points. It could be trying to apply changes following an update, etc. While trying to resolve this, steps should (contingency) be taken to bring a replacement up.
You don't lose anything if while you continue trying to repair this instance, you bring up a replacement. Is this a vm, or a physical system booting using a restore from a vmware vm?
Originally this was a VM under vmware, backed up using vmware data recovery, restored using the same and restored to a new VM on a new datastore. Vmware data recovery created the VMDK hard drive image from the restore, and the new VM with identical settings other than a changed name so it fits in the inventory. The users are working on a temporary server, without their programs. If we take the time to re-license and reconfigure their custom software, it'll be 3 times as much work to get them switched back to this vm if we can get it booting.
That's why the main intent is to get this vm booting again, while the users are limping along on a temp vm in other cases windows was just fine with this. When i said regular i meant according to the plan - vmware data recovery essentially makes full backups whenever the schedule runs, but it manages the data like snapshots (and with deduplication) so everything is 'point in time' when you choose to restore the whole machine or certain files. 100% of the data is in the restored virtual hard drive the original VM has an issue outside the scope of this EE question, and doesn't exactly function anymore. There's an unpublished bug we just found out about in VDR which creates snapshots for backup like it should, but doesn't always delete them.
So the original vm has over 400 snapshots on disk, and once it hit a certain point (the N'th snapshot), any read/write in that VM processes at about 50kb/sec, and the processors although barely used, 'feel' like it's a 286mhz from 1995 the original VM was booted many times and is booted - but remember the restored VM has a different name, on a different physical host, on a different datastore if that helps. Ah - the restored VM on the new host with the restored hard drive on a new datastore, has never booted beyond the issue presented in this question we have the help of vmware support to clear the outdated snapshots, but they say there's a 50/50 chance it could destroy the original VM, and this is another reason it's important to see the restored copy boot before we take that chance we've tried many backup methods post-failure, none work, they all fail at about 65%. We've tried symantec backup exec, veeam, vmware data recovery, windows image backup from windows itself, and vmware support tried vmrun - not only do they transfer at 500kb/sec, after 10 hours they fail at 65% or so. I believe the snapshots are the cause for your issues. The backup/restore includes them when the new one is restored. I believe there was a discussion on EE and one suggestion is create a VM install an OS. The after confirming this VM boots, replace the disk resources from this VM.
Not sure whether cloning software that will clone 'HD' the difficulty I see is that you have a 1 TB partition. I still would suggest going back to my prior suggestion, before making attempts to fix the old VM a, go through and setup from scratch a new VM which while the old VM is still booting and can be referenced for applications and data. As well as if possible have two VM's s that have all the applications you need just in case. The thing about copying all the VM files is that the original 1tb virtual hard drive is now accompanied by 4tb more files made up of snapshots that never cleared out but are still referenced the restored hard drive was just one file, no snaps, 650gb on physical storage, thin provisioned for 1.4tb as the original is there are lots of things to try with the old VM which partially works, but really the scope here is to get the restored virtual hard drive booting i might throw up a new VM, new virtual hard drive, install the same OS. Then i wonder what if i replace the CONTENTS of the new drive, with the conents of the restored virtual drive (windows, program files, users, etc).
Action Windows 7 Use the guest operating system's Programs Uninstall a program item. Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 Use the guest operating system's Programs and Features Uninstall a program item. Windows XP and earlier Use the guest operating system's Add/Remove Programs item.
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Mac OS X Server Use the Uninstall VMware Tools application, found in /Library/Application Support/VMware Tools. Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD, NetWare Log in as root and enter the following command in a terminal window: vmware-uninstall-tools.pl Operating System Specific Package If you installed VMware Tools using an Operating System Specific Package, uninstallation instructions are at.