Installation guide

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VMware ESX Server Administration Guide
If you are using image files, you should connect the virtual machine’s CD-ROM or
floppy drives to the appropriate image files before you begin installing the guest
operating system.
Note: When you are installing a guest operating system on a new virtual disk, you
may see a message warning you that the disk is corrupted and asking if you want to
place a partition table on the disk. This does not mean there is any problem with your
physical hard disk. It simply means some data needs to be written to the file that holds
your virtual hard disk. All you need to do is respond Yes. You also need to partition and
format the virtual disk as you would with a new, blank hard drive.
Installing a Guest Operating System on a Previously Formatted Raw Disk
If you try to install a guest operating system on a raw or physical disk that was
formatted previously with a file system, you might see a No operating system
error when you power on the virtual machine. This occurs because the boot order
specified in the virtual machine’s BIOS defaults to the floppy disk, hard disk and then
the CD-ROM drive. Instead of booting from the installation CD-ROM, the virtual
machine tries booting from the hard disk.
To work around this issue, do one of the following:
1. Change the boot order in BIOS so the virtual machine boots from the CD-ROM
drive before trying the hard disk. When the virtual machine boots, enter the BIOS
and change the boot order on the Boot menu.
2. Zero out the first 64KB of the raw disk using dd or a similar utility.
Installing VMware Tools in the Guest Operating System
This section describes how to install VMware Tools and the network driver in the guest
operating system.
• Installing VMware Tools in a Windows Server 2003 Guest on page 47
• Installing VMware Tools in a Windows XP Guest on page 47
• Installing VMware Tools in a Windows 2000 Guest on page 48
• Installing VMware Tools and the Network Driver in a Windows NT 4.0 Guest on
page 48
• Installing VMware Tools in a Linux Guest on page 49
• Installing VMware Tools in a NetWare 6.0 SP3, 6.5 or 5.1 SP6 Guest on page 50
Note the following:
• The steps for each guest operating system assume that you are working from a
remote console connected to your virtual machine.