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jayunit100
Asked: 2021-03-31 07:04:32 +0800 CST

VMWare Workstation on Ubuntu: Can't "see" windows server image in 2019 ISOs

  • 772

When running packer to create new VM images on ubuntu (focal fossa, 20.04) I found that the ISO seems to be not detected by the windows installer when booting:

That is, windows server installation initialization sais that "No images are available". This is odd to me because, after all, how would the windows server installation even start if there was no iso to begin with?

  • How can i determine why it is that the windows OS installation doesn't see any OS images, and is the ability to properly load guest extensions or OS images related somehow?
  • Is it possible that, some portions of the ISO arent readable by VMWare Workstation for some reason?
  • Or, is the initial windows server installation step something that is controlled by an external program from the ISO (i.e. something in the BIOS of the VM)?

enter image description here

windows ubuntu iso vmware-workstation

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    This message is not anything to do with mounting iso images specifically.

    I see you are using Packer here, where the approach is to copy an AutoUnattend.xml containing the required settings onto a floppy image and then mount that.

    I would check that there’s a section of this file that points to a valid Edition of Windows (e.g “Windows Server 2019 SERVERSTANDARDCORE”) and that if you are using Evaluation media which you appear to be, you do not supply a Product Key in the same file. The product key can be uncommented for MSDN and Retail/VLK images.

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  2. Solution: Create a file in the bootable device called ei.cfg under the source folder. Insert this code:

    [Channel]
Retail

    https://www.winhelponline.com/blog/windows-10-setup-editions-not-shown-clean-install/

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