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VMware ESXI 7.0: Windows Server 2012 R2 shows «non-accessible boot device» (Oct. 2021) | Born’s Tech and Windows World (borncity.com)

VMware ESXI 7.0: Windows Server 2012 R2 shows «non-accessible boot device»

]It’s an issue that seems to have blown up in some administrators’ faces in mid-October 2021. VMware ESXI 7.0 administrators were getting a «non-accessible boot device» error message on virtualized Windows Server 2012 R2 machines. Then the server would no longer boot. The cause was a patch from Microsoft for the paravirtualized SCSI adapters.

Shortly after, the reddit.com thread Server 2012 R2 on ESXI 7.0 non-accessible boot device from Windows paravirtual SCSI patch was created. It says that the security only update for Windows Server 2012 R2 has a patch VMWare, Inc. – SCSIAdapter – 1.3.18.0 that causes problems. The machine goes into repair mode and can no longer boot.

This was a fun one, figured to write it up to hopefully help someone else. When patching Windows 2012 R2, MS Catalog is showing Windows 8, 8.1, 2012 and 2012 R2 ) directly from MS there was an update – VMWare, Inc. – SCSIAdapter – 1.3.18.0 Side note VMWare is stating 1.3.17 as the latest from 9/16 – https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/82290

When applying the update, along with other patches, it caused the machine to go into automatic repair mode (possibly blue screen but it did not display as such) and no drives would show in diskpart when opening the command prompt. Attempting to do normal BCDedit and bootrec commands to repair did not fix the issue.

The thread creator also provided a workaround right away.

In repair mode remove all pvscsi.inf drivers installed and install the one from the VMWare tools install of the ESXi host.

Take a snapshot first just in case.Boot into windows recovery and start the command promptMount the vmware tools through Vcenter either via the datastore location or guest ->install tools -> mountrun the following commandsNote: D should be the mounted tools ISO if not skip down to the diskpart command to see which drive letter you’re using for the ISO

d:
cd "program files\vmware\wmware tools\drivers\pvscsi\win8\amd64"
drvload .\pvscsi.inf

Should come back as drvload: successfully loadedYou should now see your drives, you may have to assign a drive letter to the «C» drive but in my cases i didn’t. To verify / view do the following

diskpart
list volume
exit

Note the letter of the C drive, mine was always E when i checked.Now run the next set of commands to get all the base drivers installed on the system. Note this will take a hot minute depending on your system

dism /image:E:\ /get-drivers

Take note of all the oem<number>.inf names that have pvscsi.inf listed by them the other ones for vmnet3,display, printer, etc should be ok to leave alone. you will want to remove all of the pvscsi.inf ones. Do the following BUT CHANGE THE NUMBER ON OEM!! Don’t run it copy paste blindly

dism /image:E:\ /remove-driver /driver:oem1.inf

Once you’ve gone back and removed all of them, most likely there will be more than one if the server has been around a while, you will now add in the one back from vmware tools that you still have mounted. Note: at this point you still should be in the iso mounted drive on D. otherwise the following command you’ll need to adjust to where the scsi driver is. Run the following

dism /image:E:\ /add-driver /driver:".\pvscsi.inf"

After success on there, you can exit via

exit

then choose continue to booting. System should now boot.Make sure to remove your snapshot, once successful, and remove tools mounted.