Troubleshooting Virtual Machine Conversion Issues

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This article provides guidance for troubleshooting issues with virtual machine conversion using the Convert Physical Server Wizard in System Center Virtual Machine Manager (VMM). The precise wording of an error message that you observe may differ from this catalog if your VMM installation has been updated with any hotfixes or service packs.

Some error messages contain placeholder text, such as <specified server>. The placeholder text indicates a value that VMM provides in the actual error message.

Virtual Machine Issues

Issue Possible cause Solution

Convert physical server fails with error 407: "The agent operation with server <computer name> was not successful."

This may be caused by a conflicting Windows Firewall configuration setting.

If Windows Firewall is enabled, ensure that group policy does not prohibit the remote administration service and restart the source computer. Then try the convert physical server operation again.

Convert physical server fails with error 410: “Agent installation failed on <computer name>.”

Windows Installer 2.0 is installed on the source computer. VMM requires Windows Installer 3.1 or greater.

Download and install Windows Installer 3.1 Redistributable (v2) from https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=91050 on the source computer, and then try the conversion again.

Convert physical server fails with error 554: "Access is denied.
Permissions have not been granted to access the registry key
HKEY_LOCAL_Machine\vmmsystem\ControlSet001\ENUM\PCI\VEN_1011&DEV_009&SUBSYS_21140A00&REV_20."

An account other than “local service” was used during installation. If a network service, or a specific domain account is used as the start credentials, the SCVMM install will succeed
and configure Virtual Server hosts, but later failures vary from “host not responding” problems to convert physical server (P2V) failures.

Manually configure an SPN for the remote SQL database according to the instructions at https://support.microsoft.com/kb/811889 and try the conversion again.

Convert physical server fails with error 1206: "A Virtual Disk Service (VDS) error occurred on server <host name>."

The Virtual Disk service may be stopped.
  1. Check the event log of the destination host for VDS errors and then restart the service.
  2. If the VHDMount component is installed, there are no errors in the event log, and the Virtual Disk service is stopped, check Group Policy for a policy that disables the Virtual Disk Service.

Convert physical server fails with error 2940: "VMM is unable to complete the requested file transfer. The connection to the BITS server <server name> could not be established."
  1. The BITS service and the agent may not be installed and running.
  2. A firewall may be blocking HTTPS traffic.
  1. To install the BITS service, go to Add or Remove Programs, and then click Add or Remove Windows Components.
  2. Click Application Server, and then click Internet Information Services (IIS).
  3. Select "Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS) Server Extensions".
  4. Add the HTTPS port (by default 443) to the firewall exceptions on the BITS server.

Convert physical server fails with error 3133: "Virtual Machine Manager could not connect to source computer <computer name> after it restarted into Windows PE."

This can happen for several reasons:

  1. The network adapter device drivers or storage device drivers that work with WinPE 2.0 are not installed.
  2. DHCP is not enabled.
  3. DHCP is not in use.

  1. Add the supported network adapter in the Convert Physical Server Wizard, and try again. Alternatively, you can use the command line new-p2v and copy-harddisk cmdlets. You can use the (-DriverPath) parameter to inject files in the WinPE image. For example, if the drivers are in c:\BM_NIC_DRIVERS_VISTA, at the Windows PowerShell - Virtual Machine Manager command shell type the following:

     New-p2v -DriverPath c:\IBM_NIC_DRIVERS_VISTA
  2. Ensure that DHCP is enabled.
  3. Set a static IP on the source machine, and then edit the hosts and lmhost.sam files for both the host and the VMM server.

To set a static IP on the source machine enter the following command on the command line after the source machine boots into WinPE :

netsh interface ipv4 set address “Local Area Connection” static 10.241.0.7    255.255.0.0    10.241.0.2    1

To learn the temporary machine name (for example p2v-abcd) use the following command

hostname

To add the IP address to the VMM server and host, open the %windir%\system32\drivers\etc\hosts file on each server and add a line for that machine name-IP, for example 10.241.0.7 p2v-abcd. Do the same for the %windir%\system32\drivers\etc\lmhosts.sam files for both the host and VMM server.

Convert physical server fails with error 3134:" An internal agent error has occurred on <computer name>."

The source computer has less than 512 MB of RAM.

Add more RAM to the source computer to make at least 512 MB.

Convert physical server fails with error 3136: "An error occurred executing <file name>; on <server name>."

Physical to virtual conversion requires installation of the Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK), available at https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=86477.

Reinstall the WAIK on the VMM server, and then retry the operation.

Convert physical server fails with error 3210: "Boot and\or System volume C was not selected or is not found on source machine <server name>. Selected machine <server name> cannot be virtualized. Verify that the boot and system volumes are selected for migration and the boot.ini file is present on the active volume of the boot drive. Then try the operation again."

This problem can occur if you installed Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 by using Windows Preinstallation Environment (Windows PE) 2.0 or Windows Deployment Services (WDS). When you perform an installation by using Windows PE 2.0 or WDS, the volume is formatted to use the new boot sector that is included with Windows Vista. The P2V job fails because System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2007 does not support P2V on Windows Vista.

To write a boot sector that is compatible with the P2V migration, follow these steps on the system that cannot perform the P2V migration:

  1. Insert the Windows Vista installation media in the DVD drive.
  2. Click Start, click Run, type cmd, and then click OK.
  3. Type the following commands at the command prompt. Press ENTER after each command.
  • [The drive letter for your DVD drive]:
  • cd boot
  • bootsect /nt52 c: /force

You receive a message that resembles the following:

Target volumes will be updated with NTLDR compatible bootcode. C: (\\?\Volume{da079f35-ddf6-11db-9dda-806e6f6e6963}) Updated NTFS filesystem bootcode. The update may be unreliable since the volume could not be dismounted during the update: Access is denied. Bootcode was successfully updated on all targeted volumes.

If the Windows XP system or the Windows Server 2003 system does not have a DVD drive, copy the Bootsect.exe file from the Vista installation media to a temporary location, and then run the bootsect command that appears in step 3.

Additional Resources