VMware ESXI 7.0: Windows Server 2012 R2 zeigt "non-accessible boot device" (Okt. 2021)

[English]Es ist ein Thema, welches Mitte Oktober 2021 so einigen Administratoren um die Ohren geflogen zu sein scheint. Administratoren von VMware ESXI 7.0 bekamen eine "non-accessible boot device"-Fehlermeldung bei virtualisierten Windows Server 2012 R2 Maschinen angezeigt. Dann bootete der Server nicht mehr. Ursache ist ein Patch von Microsoft für die paravirtualisierten SCSI-Adapter.

Blog-Leser Casten hatte mir am 17. Oktober eine kurze Mail geschrieben (danke dafür), aber die ersten Post im Internet habe ich so zum 14. Oktober 2021 – also wenige Tage nach dem Oktober 2021-Patchday von Microsoft – gefunden. Ich trage mal die Informationen hier im Blog nach, bin bisher nicht dazu gekommen. Im Forenpost Issues with Microsoft Windows Security Updates October 2021 – 2012 R2(OS) fragt jemand:

Hi All,

It seems there was an issue with Oct 21 monthly quality rollup patching. we installed the latest patches on two 2012 R2 servers and then rebooted. After that, they are all not booting up and stuck refresh\BCD screen error.

is anyone facing the issue who ever worked on 2012 R2 with Oct Patches…?

Regards
CHANDU

Ein weiterer Benutzer bestätigt dann diese Probleme mit Windows Server 2012 R2 unter VMware ESXI 7.0:

I have three virtual machines exhibiting the same behavior. They are VMware VMs. Are you using the VMware Paravirtual SCSI driver? I am on all three of these VMs and the recovery-thing Command Prompt was not originally able to find my virtual HDD. I added a virtual LSI Logic SCSI adapter and moved the vHDD to it, and now the recovery-thing Command Prompt is able to see the data (C: is the Recovery partition, D: is my normal C: drive) but they are still unable to boot. The various safe mode, recovery modes, etc unfortunately do nothing.

Unfortunately I have no fix for you, but wanted to share a little about my environment and the troubleshooting I've done thus far in case we can figure out a solve.

Kurz danach wurde der reddit.com-Thread Server 2012 R2 on ESXI 7.0 non-accessible boot device from Windows paravirtual SCSI patch erstellt. Dort heißt es, dass das security only Update für Windows Server 2012 R2 einen Patch VMWare, Inc. – SCSIAdapter – 1.3.18.0 aufweise, der für Probleme sorge. Die Maschine geht in den Reparaturmodus und kann nicht mehr starten.

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.

Der Thread-Ersteller hat auch gleich einen Workaround geliefert.

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.

Inzwischen hat auch VMware einen KB-Artikel Removal of Windows Update published PVSCSI driver version 1.3.18.0 (86053) veröffentlicht.