Windows 2003 to 2008 inline upgrade - on vmware

I have done many virtual servers running 2003 to 2008 inline upgrade no issues, got this specific server which is not behaving

Its running on ESXi 4.1

Windows 2003 inline upgrade to 2008 (32bit) - goes thru the whole process and on the final boot up it hangs on the green bar scrolling across, left it for 12 hours and still the same

Anyone come across this before.

Not specifically related to an upgrade, but out of the blue after a reboot on a 2008R2 VM, yes.

I booted it from a 2008R2 disk, chose to repair computer, and it eventually came back with the OS found.
Selected this and fired up a command prompt.
I ran 'bootrec /fixmbr' and 'bootrec /fixboot'
After a restart it booted with no issues.

No guarantees the same fix will work for you, but it's a starting point.

If your drive behind these upgrades is 2003 being out of support, you should also look to upgrade ESXi - General support for it ended in 2014 and 'Technical Guidance' ended in May.

As above, I'd highly advise looking to update the host. There's a heck of a lot of bug fixes that may help.

finally got it fixed was a virtual hard disk controller driver - booted CD when to repair, once command prompt came up deleted the lsi driver file and bobs your uncle .. servers continued the upgrade and now running

I cannot think of a single example of a good reason to do an upgrade of a server OS rather than just deploy a new one alongside the old.

Caged said:

I cannot think of a single example of a good reason to do an upgrade of a server OS rather than just deploy a new one alongside the old.

Click to expand...

I P2V'ed the original server to a VM then did the upgrade on the VM - if that went pear shape, still had the physical server running 2003 to go back on.

another update I suspect the issue was with it being ESXi 4.1 as previous ones I did were hosted on ESXi 6

Upgrading 2003 to 2008 (non R2) -- talk about incurring enormous technical debt. 2008 went end of mainstream support in January 2015, and only has extended support til 2020. 2008 is also a dead end as 2008 R2 is x64 so can't be in place upgraded (thank heavens). So instead of spending that time getting the software working on 2012 R2, everyone's job has now been made that much harder (these upgraded servers will give you WAY more ongoing trouble, guaranteed).