[rescue] Re: Is it the x86 hardware or the OS?

[Gavin Hubbard]

>Not (well, not really) trying to add fuel to the "is the x86 architecture a
>pile of excrement or is it not" but this just happened on one of my servers.
>
>We're using VMWare GSX Server (2.5) to host four VM machines.  Host is W2K,
>VMs are W2K.
>
>Restarted one of the VMs.  Reboot takes all of 20 seconds so I logged out of
>the mgt tool and waited .. waited.  Realized it had been too long, logged
>back in and was greeted, on the Virtual Machine mind you, with a blue screen
>and the words
>
>*** STOP: 0X0000007B (0xF741F84C, etc)
>INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE
>
>If this is the first time you've seen this Stop error screen<snip>
>
>
>The boot device in question is a friggin file.  W2K halted because it
>couldn't find it's drive ... which is really a file?
>
>I'm sure there are some really good reasons _why_ this error popped - it
>hasn't happened again - but it gives some ammo (or does it) to the idea that
>there isn't really anything wrong with x86 and the finger can be pointed,
>anecdotally, at the OS.


Actually, I think you'll find that the problem is with faulty virtual disk emulation under VMWare - not the underlying hardware or the host/guest operating systems. The fact that you got a stop error means that VMWare has managed to bootstrap the boot loader from the virtual disk and the VM is attempting to boot. My guess is that, for some reason, the virtual disk has timed out on an I/O request and NT has halted as a precaution.

VMWare is excellent, but it isn't perfect.

Regards,

Gavin