Creating a P2V bootable VHD

[Dolphin65]

Hi there,
I am planning to migrate a physical WIndows 2012 R2 server as a VM hosted on a Hyper-V core server.
Steps:
- Create a VHDx from existing Windows 2012 R2 machine
- Install Hyper-V 2019 core
- Create a new VM from the image created in step 1

What I want to ensure is that the VHDx image is bootable. Is there any special setting I need to use when creating the image using Starwind?

[yaroslav (staff)]

What you are planning to do is reinstalling OS, am I right? You can use StarWind V2V Converter/P2V Migrator as described here
https://www.starwindsoftware.com/v2v-he ... DVHDX.html
https://www.starwindsoftware.com/v2v-he ... erver.html

[Dolphin65]

I have followed the instructions as suggested, selecting both disk (main volume and recovery volume) and converted to local file VHD. Conversion worked, then I have manually copied the VHD file to Hyper-V server and created a new VM using an existing VHD, but when attempting to boot, an error is thrown:

"Windows failed to start. A recent hardware or software change might be the cause.The boot selection failed because a required device is inaccessible."

What can I try?

[yaroslav (staff)]

Hi,

Try converting as VHDX. Also, select repair mode (if possible).

[Dolphin65]

I have selected repair mode and VHD shouldn't be an issue for now, I guess the GUIDs or boot sector is scrambled as for the conversion. The image can be manually mounted and shows correctly:

[yaroslav (staff)]

Thank you for the update. Yes, sometimes we check that option.
Glad to know that it works.