vSphere VM Clone Problems + Fixes

Just recently a colleague of mine had some fun and games completing what should have been a simple clone of Windows 2008 R2 64bit VMware virtual machine.

We managed to get to the bottom of the issues and get the clones completed, so for future info and help of others here are the issues and resolutions to those issues encountered.







Clone VM created successfully, however upon first boot of the VM, the following were seen:



According to VMware KB Article 2004505 this is caused by the entry:

disk.EnableUUID = "TRUE"

in the source VM's virtual machine configuration (vmx) file.  Download, edit and upload the vmx with the following setting:

disk.EnableUUID = "FALSE"

See the VMware KB article for further details around editing virtual machine vmx files.




Again, clone VM created successfully, however upon first boot of the VM, the following was seen:


According to the Microsoft KB Article KB981542 this issue occurs if the original operating system contains a registry key that is larger than 8 kilobytes (KB).

The resolution being to install a patch on the source VM. 

Unfortunately the patch is not available on the MS website, however it is available here:

• 32bit Windows 2008R2 / Windows 7 = Windows6.1-KB981542-x86.msu
• 64bit Windows 2008R2 / Windows 7 = Windows6.1-KB981542-x64.msu

After overcoming both those issues, the VM clones completed and booted successfully and what should have been a quick and easy job was done.

Thanks should go to Alan for highlighting the issues and persevering with the fixes.... both of them!

- Chris