Cannot boot Windows Server in FreeNAS 11

[ryanhunt]

So I finally managed to remove Corral from my system and installed a fresh copy of FreeNAS 11 (Stable).

I was able to create an Ubuntu server VM within the GUI, however I cannot get a Windows VM to boot from the CD. I've tried various OS versions (Server 2008, 2012, 2016) and they either don't boot at all, crash after the Windows logo appears (and disconnects me) or simply gets stuck on the blue Windows icon (Server 2016 Essentials).

I'm running a HP N54L.

What can I do to diagnose the problem?

 

[BigDave]

The lack of a response to your question is probably due to the absence of details regarding

• Basic hardware makeup of the HP N54L, such as CPU & RAM installed (at least)
• Basic configuration of the Ubuntu VM (resources granted to this VM)
• Resources remaining for other VMs

I personally am not familiar with running VMs and can not help, but you will get more
members willing to help if you provide as much detail as you can within your first post.

You might also take the time to read the thread under Forum Rules as it also contains
steps to help you, get timely and efficient help with your issue.

 

[ryanhunt]

Fair call @BigDave :)

So I read this thread but I cannot find out where the logs are for the VMs so I can figure out what's going wrong...

My CPU info is:

Code:

p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 10.0px Monaco; color: #f4f4f4; background-color: #000000; background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.85)} span.s1 {font-variant-ligatures: no-common-ligatures}

CPU: AMD Turion(tm) II Neo N54L Dual-Core Processor (2196.39-MHz K8-class CPU)

  Origin="AuthenticAMD"  Id=0x100f63  Family=0x10  Model=0x6  Stepping=3

  Features=0x178bfbff<FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,PSE36,CLFLUSH,MMX,FXSR,SSE,SSE2,HTT>

  Features2=0x802009<SSE3,MON,CX16,POPCNT>

  AMD Features=0xee500800<SYSCALL,NX,MMX+,FFXSR,Page1GB,RDTSCP,LM,3DNow!+,3DNow!>

  AMD Features2=0x837ff<LAHF,CMP,SVM,ExtAPIC,CR8,ABM,SSE4A,MAS,Prefetch,OSVW,IBS,SKINIT,WDT,NodeId>

  SVM: NP,NRIP,NAsids=64

  TSC: P-state invariant

My machine has 16gb ECC RAM, and the (working) Ubuntu VM has 1 Virtual CPU with 2 GiB of Ram.

The Windows configurations both 10 & Server (I used the demo ISO of Windows Server 2016 Essentials) were both configured with 1 Virtual CPU and 1 GiB and 2 GiB respectively. I had the Ubuntu server stopped when I tried to configure/run the Windows VMs.

Any ideas of where I can look? Thanks! :)

 

[ryanhunt]

Furthermore, I tried to boot a WinPE ISO, and I got this error:

Code:

Your PC needs to restart.
Please hold down the power button. 
Error Code: 0x000000C4
Parameters:
0x000000000000091
0x000000000000000
0xFFFFF8003F36D880
0x000000000000000

Other queries seems this was related to this problem with VirtualBox here

 

[John Doe]

same issue here, win 10 working, win server 2016 crashes after win logo

 

[shawndewet]

Yup, I just tried as well and got the same behaviour. Sad.

 

[crazyadmin]

I too am running an N54L. The /var/run/dmesg.boot shows it supports POPCNT, which as far as I can tell, means that BHYVE should work on it.
I also was not sure where the logs for bhyve, if any, are. Not sure if they would shed any light on this. This machine ran virtualization without issues as a: VMWARE esxi host, Windows 2012 Hyper-V host, and Windows 2016 Hyper-V Host.

 

[diracp]

sadly, i can confirm the same behavior on SM hardware. Install crashes after windows logo and kicks me out the vnc... I have light vm needs so wanted to replace esxi with bhyve but it looks real bad at the moment

 

[jeff9187]

I just started with FreeNAS a week ago with version 11, and I'm having the exact same issues. I see Windows 2012 Server install start from "CD", Windows logo comes up, circle-dot-thingy starts spinning, and blamo, the VNC session stops. I can't seem to find a straight answer regarding the requirement of having a UEFI BIOS on the motherboard (I don't) but my old CPU (i7 980X), does support the EPT and UG requirements.

I also tried exporting my VirtualBox server as a RAW image via 'vboxmanage clonehd' and using dd to put it on a ZVOL, but I had no luck there either (most certainly due to my own ignorance in such matters).

 

[skywise_ca]

I'll throw my system into the ring as well.
I've got several Ubuntu VMs running as well as a couple of jails.
I'm trying to get Windows 10 CD to boot (Win10_1607_English_x64.iso, Win10_1703_English_x64.iso) and I get the blue logo and that's it, no spinning dots, just quiet until I kill the VM.
My system is a 32 core Opteron system with 256G of RAM.
I gave the win10 system 2 cores and 8G of RAM.
Oh yes, I'm running 11U1.

 

[ryanhunt]

Ok, update from my end, but no further progress. It seems this was reported back in Corral days here, where @m0nkey_ suggested "FreeNAS 10 is based on FreeBSD 11-RELEASE. Until FreeBSD 12 goes -RELEASE, it's unlikely Bhyve will be updated, unless of course, iX decide to back port it."

I thought I'd build up a FreeBSD-Current (12) system and copy over the /usr/local/share/uefi-firmware files from 12 to FreeNAS, but it didn't seem to have any changes, Windows 10 still barfs at the blue logo.

Do any experts on here (@BigDave ?? ) know how we can help get this issue fixed?

 

[jeff9187]

Curiouser and curiouser. The thread you linked made it sound as if it were a AMD only issue, but I'm using Intel and seeing the same behavior. The 11.0-U2 update didn't change anything.

 

[Martin Redhead]

Ok I'll add my system showing the same problems. I've got a HN54L FreeNas 11 Stable using the bog standard Windows 8.1 iso on a VM with 1 (or2) vcpus and 8gb Ram. The freenas has 16gb. The ZVol allocated is 100Gb blank. I get the iso bootint then "Your system needs to restart - Press and hold power button.".

Trying an prebuilt raw (working) Windows 8.1 image never boots and just drops to the UEFI shell.

I had high hope for bhyve, but it looks like I'll go back to phpVirtualBox for now.

 

[pyrojoe34]

Same exact problem here. Ubuntu 16.04-LTS installs and runs just fine but neither Win10 nor Win7 will get past initial install splash screen.

FreeNAS 11.0-U2
AMD FX8120
16GB RAM
VM Zvol given 100GB

I have tried 1,2,4, and 6 virtual cores and 2-8GB RAM and nothing works. CPU is working at ~15-20% while frozen in the splash screen so it's trying to do something. I even left it "installing" overnight and nothing happened.

 

[murrays_34]

Hi Folks, I am experiencing the same problem. Linux distros install. Microsoft's Srv 2016 gives me a frozen blue Windows logo and Srv 2012R2 gives me 0x000000C4 same as Ryan Hunt. My installation of FreeNas is an upgrade from version 9 via the updater- not sure if this makes any difference. A solution I came across for Virtual Box running on Windows is to run the following configuration line: "c:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox\VBoxManage.exe" setextradata [vmname] VBoxInternal/CPUM/CMPXCHG16B 1 . I am not sure how to try the equivalent on FreeNas?

 

[jackq]

Bump! Have any of you guys managed to get this working in the meantime? I've tried a couple of stock windows ISO's but it gets stuck on the EFI shell. I already have two Linux VM's running with 1 to 2 GB of ram each (My system is a Dell R510 with one Intel X5650 and 24 GB of ECC RAM). From what I've read you managed to install windows server to some extent at least. I can't even boot into the installer. I tried manually adding the EFI file, but that also didn't work.

 

[jackq]

I found it! Bhyve has some nice documentation on how to create an appropriate image for Windows to boot from. https://wiki.freebsd.org/bhyve/Windows
I would recommend creating a jail in which you can execute these steps and then copy the resulting install.iso out of the jail and using that to install Freenas. It's currently installing for me.

 

[EsTaF]

I found it! Bhyve has some nice documentation on how to create an appropriate image for Windows to boot from. https://wiki.freebsd.org/bhyve/Windows
I would recommend creating a jail in which you can execute these steps and then copy the resulting install.iso out of the jail and using that to install Freenas. It's currently installing for me.

Code:

$ md5 virtio-win-0.1.96.iso 
MD5 (virtio-win-0.1.96.iso) = d406bf6748b9ba4c872c5b5301ba7272

$ tar xf virtio-win-0.1.96.iso --include="NetKVM/2k12R2/amd64/*" -C iso-remaster/virtio/
tar: (Empty error message)
tar: /NetKVM/2k12R2/amd64/*: Not found in archive
tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors.

If I just mount virtio-win-0.1.96.iso, copy NetKVM/2k12R2/amd64/' files to iso-remaster/virtio/, copy bhyve-windows-unattend-xml/files/win2016preview_AutoUnattend.xml to iso-remaster/AutoUnattend.xml and create iso, so I get error, when install win:

1. on FreeNAS

Code:

# pkg install uefi-edk2-bhyve01
Updating local repository catalogue...
pkg: file:///usr/ports/packages/meta.txz: No such file or directory
repository local has no meta file, using default settings
pkg: file:///usr/ports/packages/packagesite.txz: No such file or directory
Unable to update repository local
Error updating repositories!

2. without install uefi-edk2-bhyve01. when boot install.iso
"windows could not parse or process inattend answer file ..."