How-to fix VMware Converter error FAILED: Unable to find the system volume, reconfiguration is not possible.

VMware

I was recently tasked with migrating a Hyper-V machine to our VMware environment. However, each time VMware Converter was ran, the task would fail at 97% with an error “FAILED: Unable to find the system volume, reconfiguration is not possible.“.

FAILED: Unable to find the system volume, reconfiguration is not possible

Looking further into the virtual machine there were a number of concerns I had on the VM. One such issue which I believe might be causing the above error, is that the system volume drive was on drive 0 while the “C:” drive was on drive 1. Whereas these are typically on the same drive in most Windows installs.

Below are the steps I took to fix this VM and made the migration from Hyper-V to VMware a success.

Rebuild boot record to resolve, FAILED: Unable to find the system volume, reconfiguration is not possible.

  1. Attach the server .ISO to the newly migrated virtual machine in VMware and boot from that image. You may need to change the boot order, in order for the VM to boot from the ISO.
  2. Now click on Next at the language, time, keyboard prompt.
    select language, time, keyboard
  3. Then, click Repair your computer in the lower left corner.
    select repair computer
  4. Next, select Troubleshoot.
    choose an option troubleshoot
  5. Now click on Command Prompt under Advanced options.
    advanced options command prompt
  6. In the command prompt, type in the following commands: 
    Bootrec /fixmbr
Bootrec /fixboot
Bootrec /scanos
Bootrec /rebuildbcd

    restore commands

  7. Finally, type EXIT in the command prompt and restart the virtual machine.

After the virtual machine rebooted, Windows Server loaded without issue and I was able to complete the migration by re-IPing the VM and updating DNS records.

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3 Comments

  1. Do you mean to run this on the existing source VM, not on the failed target VM? I’m not 100% clear on what you mean when you say “Attach the server .ISO to the newly migrated virtual machine in VMware and boot from that image.” How do you perform this if the conversion failed and the destination VM cannot boot?

    Reply

    1. Mike,

      You are doing exactly as I’ve pointed out “Attach the server .ISO to the newly migrated virtual machine in VMware and boot from that image” this is because the transfer is done using VMware Converter however the boot loader on the transferred machine is busted. Thus the need to mount the ISO on said VM and repair it.

      Hope this helps!

      -Michael

      Reply

  2. I’m running into this for the first time. I have a set of two test and two production physical HP servers to convert. The two test HP servers converted normally. However, the two production servers are having this Failure. No amount of Option changes in the conversion wizard have resolved it. I’ll be trying again today and trying the options that Mike listed here and report back.

    Thank you for the article!

    -Chad

    Reply