After converting a physical operating system installation to a virtual server, you should follow some additional steps to clean up the new virtual server. I recommend you read my previous guides on preparing for conversion and how to accelerate a P2V, and then once you have your new VM, clean it up with the below steps;

Uninstallations

The new virtual server does not need any of the hardware specific drivers, software or tools.

Go to Control Panel and Add/Remove Software – anything in the following categories

  • HP, Dell, IBM etc management software suites
  • Drivers – particularly network card management suites
  • Tape backup software – you are going to use a new VADP enabled system now, aren’t you?
  • Integrated component tools (iLO, DRAC etc)
  • Hardware specific software

This might require a reboot. Some applications may need their files manually deleted from the disk.

HP servers will have many components that need to be uninstalled, some require a reboot between each product being uninstalled. Dell servers have many components that may need multiple reboots to remove.

Removing non-present devices

Windows will not display devices that are not physically connected to the server. This makes it impossible to uninstall the hardware as it is not shown in Device Manager.

To show non present devices, perform the following;

  • Open a command prompt on the new virtual server
  • Type set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1
  • Type start devmgmt.msc into the same command prompt
  • Device manager will now start. Go to the view menu and choose “Show Hidden Devices”
  • Non present devices will be shown as faded icons
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show_nonpresent_devices-command

Then, in the Device Manager, go to the View menu and choose “Show Hidden Devices”. Now you will see more categories, and when you open them up you should see lots of items that have faded icons.

hidden_devices_devmgr1

Select the greyed out icons and either right-click and choose “Uninstall”, or simply hit “delete” on your keyboard to uninstall the device.

Not all devices that are not present are shown with faded icons – many Dell components are marked as needed for the server to boot, specifically many network card devices.uninstall_device

In many cases, there will be multiple components with the same name, with one present and one absent. Delete the faded icons to improve system stability.

Reboot after uninstalling non present devices.

Post conversion checks

It should go without saying that you should now do the following before putting the new VM into service;

  • Do a full backup – you don’t want to have to do your P2V again…
  • Update your documentation, including Disaster Recovery plans
  • Validate that tools such as anti-malware are properly configured to protect your server, such as using vShield Endpoint
  • Validate external systems, such as monitoring and compliance checking systems are working
  • Reconfigure to take advantage of virtualisation

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