I recently (well several weeks back, just tidying up my to blog work!) deployed a VM with the Windows Server 2012 Release Candidate where on creation the VM type was configured to be ‘Microsoft Windows Server 8 (64-bit)’ with the default settings. Following the installation of the operating system and the subsequent restart the VM stopped responding with the white status ring.
I found two solutions to resolve this issue. Firstly there is a knowledge base article available from VMware to address this issue (http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?cmd=displayKC&docType=kc&docTypeID=DT_KB_1_1&externalId=2021887) where the VM firmware should be modified to Boot Options Firmware to use EFI instead of BIOS and to set the parameter ‘vmGenCounter.enable’ to False in the VM configuration file.
Also, I was able to deploy a virtual machine where the type was set to be ‘Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 (64-bit)’.
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