Migrated Windows 10 Pro VM Boots into UEFI Shell

dsalvia

Cadet
Joined
Jan 7, 2023
Messages
1
Hello, I have a Windows 10 Pro vmdk and vhdx file for my old physical Windows 10 Computer. I converted it to a VM that would let me run it in QNAP and it worked without a problem. I just recently acquired a Cisco UCS C220 M4 Server and installed TrueNAS Scale on it. I want to use this server as my VM server and use the QNAP as my NAS.


I first used qemu-img to convert the vhdx to a raw file with this command "qemu-img convert -f vhdx -O raw Win10.VHDX Win10.raw". After the conversion was complete, I created a zvol data and transferred the raw file to a smb share on the TrueNAS server. I connected to the TrueNAS shell window and ran this command "sudo dd if=Win10.raw of=/dev/zvol/VM+Pool/Windows_VMs/Win10 bs=1M". When that completed, I created a virtual machine with the "Use existing disk image" setting, and also making sure that the system configs (CPU, RAM, Disk Space, etc) matched what I had for the Windows RAW File. Under "Select Existing zvol" I selected the Win10 zvol. After the VM creation completed, I started the VM and saw that it booted to the UEFI Shell. While Troubleshooting, I noticed that if I selected the "Enable Hyper-V Enlightenments", It would sometimes boot up to the Windows blue recovery screen, but not all the time. I've been working on this all day and cannot find a fix on this forum or with google searches.


When I couldn't get it to work with the vhdx conversion, I also ran through the same steps with the vmdk file, but that didn't work. The folder that has the vmdk file in it, also has a vmx file as well. My virtualization experience is limited so I don't know if the vmx file has something to do with it not working. I'm also new to TrueNAS so I don't know if I did something wrong with the migration process.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. If you need any more information from me or attach logs, let me know. Thanks.

System Information
  • Motherboard make and model
    • Unknown
  • CPU make and model
    • Two Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2630 v3 @ 2.40GHz with 8 Cores and 16 Threads each
  • RAM quantity
    • Six 8GB DDR4 - total 48GB
  • Hard drives, quantity, model numbers, and RAID configuration, including boot drives
    • TrueNAS OS installed on FlexFlash Controller using two ScanDisk 32GB SD Cards in a RAID 1 mirror config.
    • There are 8 bays. 7 bays are in a RAIDz2 config for total 1.22 TiB usable space. These 7 bays have 300GB Toshiba AL14SEB030N HDD’s . The 8th Bay has a Samsung 500GB OCZ-AGILITY3 SSD installed.
  • Hard disk controllers
    • Cisco 12G SAS Modular Raid Controller
  • Network cards
    • Intel Ethernet Server Adapter I350-T4 - 4 Interfaces
    • Intel(R) I350 1 Gbps Network Controller - 2 Interfaces
 

Basserra

Dabbler
Joined
Sep 21, 2020
Messages
28
I'm planning on doing similar next week when I swap a workstation with a new build and running the old OS in a VM for sometime. First off, can you boot into the VM OS at all? Through the VM BIOS can you manually choose the OS disk and get to the OS or recovery? That might be a boot loader issue that might be fixed by boot-repair-disk. I had to use this for all my Debian VMs and two Windows VMs. Second, is your raid controller in IT/passthrough mode? If not that is going to cause you more issues than a VM not booting properly.
One thought I had was just passingthrough the entire physical disk to the VM rather than converting it, do you have that disk or original backup?
Oh, and if you're stuck in the UEFI shell, just type exit and it should drop you into the VM BIOS.
 

sfatula

Guru
Joined
Jul 5, 2022
Messages
605
I am not sure what might be causing your issue, but I used one less step and my source was a qcow2. Nevertheless, you are doing a qemu-img convert and then a dd. Instead, try qemu-img convert with output to your /dev/zvol... skipping the Win10.raw stuff. -O raw is still needed. So, get your vhdx to scale first. It worksed for me though not familiar with vhdx. Still, qemu-img supports it so I don't see why it would be any different.
 

Basserra

Dabbler
Joined
Sep 21, 2020
Messages
28
Hey I just wanted to drop a bias personal opinion. Don't use TrueNAS as a primary hypervisor. It has been repeated here time and time again that TrueNAS is a NAS server first and TrueNAS's KVM implementation is not priority, and IMO, is still in infant stage. So I would like to suggest other options to you.
Proxmox has gained good traction in recent times and the OS is highly user customizable/breakable. (qemu/KVM)
XCP-ng is a great T1 hypervisor that is based on and almost identical to Citrix XenServer hypervisor. (Xen)
- Lawrence Systems on YouTube has fantastic videos on both TrueNAS & XCP-ng, and is a reseller of iX-Systems.
ESXi vSphere is the tried and true T1 hypervisor of choice for many, both personal & professional. And I'd say is usually recommended in the forums. (VMWare/proprietary - free has limitations, requires registration)

Edit: this message is directed @ OP referencing their statement. I'm not saying don't run VMs on TN, just use it as a NAS first/only rather than a hypervisor first/only.
I want to use this server as my VM server and use the QNAP as my NAS
 
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