Fixyourcpu’s technical blog and tips

I had a server running Windows 2003 on Vmware Esx 4 that was running out of disk space.  It is a pretty simple process to extend the disk space but it took some hunting around to find it.

1. Shut down the virtual machine.
2. Edit the disk you want to expand using the Vmware client, edit the disk and increase the size.
3. Boot the virtual machines into Windows, go to disk management and verify the unallocated disk space is available.
4. You won’t be able to extend the volume if its the boot volume so you’ll need a partition manager to extend the disk.
5. Download the GParted open source partition manager Live CD, mount the iso and boot the virtual machine from it, then extend the disk and boot into Windows.

I believe in Windows 2008 you can do all this from within Windows but haven’t had to test that yet.

dmw vmware add disk space, expand boot system, expand disk, extend disk, extend volume, vmware

I was converting an IBM Thinkpad T42 laptop from physical to virtual.  The conversion went through without any errors but the machine would not start.  In the console on bootup (after BIOS screen): “A disk read error occurred, press ctl+alt+delete to restart”.  The conversion is a success, it creates the VM with no error but won’t start.

This was resolved by running the conversion again.  During the conversion wizard select devices and change the default disk controller to SCSI Bus Logic.  Run the conversion and boot the virtual machine.

dmw vmware a disk read error occurred, p2v, physical to virtial, vmware converter