VMware “Windows – Drive Not Ready” error when starting up a VM

Jul 14th

Posted by Peter Pavlovich in Problems & Solutions

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I’ve seen this error fairly consistently when attempting to start VMs on Windows-based host machines. I found a few posts on the web in various places (see below for reference links) on how best to fix this issue.

The gist of the solution is to simply make a registry edit on your host machine to prevent Windows from issuing error messages related to disk availability issues.

Here is an excerpt from a Microsoft site posting which details the change to make and explains what the “fix” does:

Using regedit, set “Value” = 2 for the ErrorMode key which can be found here:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Windows

  • The value of 2 instructs the Windows NT operating system to avoid popup messages for any hard error on the system and return the default error condition to the calling process.
  • This registry key is always checked before any hard error is received. Therefore, you do NOT have to restart the system after changing the key value. You can immediately reset the key back to 0 if any unexpected side effects occur. NOTE: No matter what the setting of the registry value, the CSRSS.exe process always logs the message details to the Windows NT Event Log.

For more info see:

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Hello world!

Jul 14th

Posted by Peter Pavlovich in Administrative

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Greetings to the world!

I’ve given up trying to keep notes either hard copy or electronic. Nothing seems to fit the bill for ease of use, ease of access and search-ability. So I thought I’d try blogging. Perhaps this will be the answer :)

I can’t promise that what I will write here will be useful, entertaining or even worth the time it takes to type it. Nonetheless, I shall go forward with the faith that it will be what it will be.

I plan to use this primarily for keeping track of technical goodies that I discover or develop as well as categorizing useful (or useless :) ) information and links for future reference. I may fool myself into thinking that someone might actually read this blog and be completely fascinated by my life and thus persuade myself to keep track of what I am currently up via posts to this blog. We shall see how much fee time I have and whether I can be that gullible.

If you have read this intro and still want to read on, well, you are a braver person than I am and my hat’s off to you!

Happy reading adventurer and God Speed!

Best regards,

Peter.

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