P2V – Disk2VHD for Hyper-V on DL380 G3, G4, G5 Freeze

A recent P2V to Hyper-V 2008 R2 on the weekend brought about a challenge.

After the completion of the P2V; Disk2VHD creations + new VM, the newly created VM would drop to an almost frozen speed. Not much could be done short of cutting its power.

A bit of digging into it, I found the HP services (HP insight and all the awesome bloatware they load with the smart start CD) were causing the freeze.

Anyhows, long story short, before your maiden boot, go into safemode and disable ALL HP services – best practice should be to uninstall any legacy HP software, but first you will need to boot to do so. Your new VM should now be able to boot comfortably and if you’re running Windows 2003 – Be ready to drive without mouse until you have your integration services installed.

 

This was on a DL 380 G3, although further reading into if in the off-time showed people having similar issues with the G4 and G5s as well.