Tag Archives: error

Windows Defender Error “Unexpected error. Sorry, we ran into a problem. Please try again”

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Since the latest Windows 10 Creators Update, I have been seeing some issue with Windows Defender alerting me that it cannot start. When I try to start the service, I get the following error:

Unexpected error. Sorry, we ran into a problem. Please try again

 

The trick was to edit some registry settings (of course).Open Registry Editor and go to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows Defender

Change DisableAntiSpyware and DisableAntiVirus values from 1 to 0

Coincidentally, I didn’t have an entry for DisableAntiVirus and had to create it

 

HPE Proliant G7 Servers and vSphere 6.5 Purple Screen of Death

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Upgrading VMware to ESXi 6.5 on HP G7 Servers will crash and cause you to scream and will require you to waste your time building a custom ISO that HPE could have easily done.
Best practice is to use the vendor’s custom ISO’s that have the hardware drivers integrated, so I used HPE’s latest Custom ISO.

HPE G7 Server support is being dropped by both HPE and VMware. In fact, vSphere 6.5 is supposedly the last version that will support the G7s. Knowing this info, I assumed upgrading from ESXi 6.0 to 6.5 on G7 would work, but I found out quickly that after the upgrade the hosts would “Purple Screen of Death” (PSOD) right after boot.

The Error: “PF Exception 14 in world 67667:sfcb-smx IP 0x0 addr 0x0″

The Issue: There are incompatible driver(s) in the customized ISO from HPE. Yes, there are more than one driver with issues.

The Workarounds: There are various workarounds that I have personally found to work, while others have been resolutions I have read about after I dealt with this, so I was not able to verify that they do indeed work, but I will list them nevertheless. Upgrading the firmware, BIOS, etc did not resolve the issue.
Note: All these workaround require a fresh install of ESXi. Running an Upgrade does not remove the incompatible drivers, and the host doesn’t stay alive long enough before crashing to manually remove them via SSH.

Solution 1: Use VMware’s Standard ISO Media
While this goes against many best practices, VMware doesnt offer too many vendor drivers in their ISO builds, so the offending drivers do not get installed and crash the system. While you can certainly use this method, you will want to follow-up and manually install the appropriate driver VIBs from HPE.

Solution 2: Build your own Custom ISO
This takes a bit more work, but is probably the most comprehensive path to resolution. You will basically need to remove drivers from the HPE Customized 6.5 ISO and inject those from the 6.0 ISO. The following are instructions on doing this.

Create Custom VMware ESXi Media

Prerequisites:

Instructions:

  • Launch vSphere PowerCLI

  • Add the HP ESXi 6.5 image bundle
    Add-EsxSoftwareDepot -DepotUrl C:\ESXi\HPE-6_5.zip

  • Check the Profile
    Get-EsxImageProfile

  • Copy the Profile
    New-EsxImageProfile -CloneProfile HPE-ESXi-6.5.0-OS-Release-6* -Name “G7-ESXi”


    Use “HPE Custom” for Vendor

  • Check the Profile
    Get-EsxImageProfile

  • Remove the driver from the image
    Remove-EsxSoftwarePackage G7-ESXi hpe-smx-provider

  • Add the HP ESXi 6.0 image bundle
    Add-EsxSoftwareDepot -DepotUrl C:\ESXi\HPE-6_0.zip
  • Check the Profile
    Get-EsxImageProfile

  • View both drivers in the two bundles
    Get-EsxSoftwarePackage | findstr smx

  • Add the necessary driver into the custom build
    add-esxsoftwarepackage -imageprofile G7-ESXi -softwarepackage “hpe-smx-provider 600.03.11.00.9-2768847”

  • Convert your custom bundle to ISO
    Export-EsxImageProfile -ImageProfile G7-ESXi -ExportToIso -filepath “C:\ESXi\G7-ESXi.iso”

  • Now take that ISO file that was created and use it to do a FRESH INSTALL. (Remember, upgrade will not work).

While attempting to upgrade a ESXi host from 6.0.0.3073146 to the latest 6.x build (6.0.0.update02-4192238) via CLI (see my post here about pathcing via CLI)

I got the following error:

[DependencyError]
VIB VMware_bootbank_esx-base_6.0.0-2.43.4192238 requires vsan >= 6.0.0-2.43, but the requirement cannot be satisfied within the ImageProfile.
VIB VMware_bootbank_esx-base_6.0.0-2.43.4192238 requires vsan << 6.0.0-2.44, but the requirement cannot be satisfied within the ImageProfile.
Please refer to the log file for more details.

The exact build on the error may be different on yours, but the issue is the same. I found this KB from VMware and decided to make a post that gets right to the point: VMware KB

This error occurs because the newest version of VSAN (which is built into ESXi) is looking for a specific base hypervisor build (esx-base). In order to run the update successfully, you’ll need to define the update profile for the VIB you are using. Its actually a lot easier than it may sound.

First, lets find the software profile the VIB you will be using contains. Run the following command, pointing the destination to the .zip VIB you uploaded to a datastore on the host.

esxcli software sources profile list -d <location_of_the_esxi_zip_bundle_on_the_datastore>

It will output something similiar to this:

That Name is the Profile you will need to add to your update command.
So in my case, the update command would look like this (highlighting added for emphasis):

esxcli software profile update -d /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/VMware-ESXi-6.0.0.update02-4192238.x86_64-Dell_Customized-offline-bundle-A04.zip -p Dell-ESXi-6.0U2-4192238-A04

It should update and finish with no errors:

The final step is to issue a reboot command, and you are done.

No image profile is found on the host or image profile is empty. An image profile is required to install or remove VIBs. To install an image profile, use the esxcli image profile install command

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While upgrade an ESXi 6 host for a customer last night, I ran into the following error when trying to patch via Update Manager:
“No image profile is found on the host or image profile is empty. An image profile is required to install or remove VIBs. To install an image profile, use the esxcli image profile install command.”

I tried various things such as rebooting the host, and manually patching via esxcli. (See my previous post on patching via CLI) but nothing seemed to work.

The server was a Dell R620, and after some searching, I found that it had a corrupt profile image. This can be fixed by replacing the corrupt image file and replacing with a known good one from another host. (The hosts dont have to be the same server version, but I would try to keep to same CPU families (Intel vs AMD). Here is how to do it.

  1. On the working ESXi host, copy the following image file: imgdb.tgz
    cp /bootbank/imgdb.tgz /vmfs/volumes/<An Accessible LUN>

  2.  On the corrupt host, copy the file imgdb.tgz from the working host to /tmp:
    cp /vmfs/volumes/<An Accessible LUN>/imgdb.tgz /tmp

  3. Change Directories to /tmp
    cd /tmp

  4. Extract file you just copied
    tar -xzf imgdb.tgz

  5. Copy the working profile files to the profile directory
    cp /tmp/var/db/esximg/profiles/* /var/db/esximg/profiles/

  6. Copy the working VIBs to the VIB repository
    cp /tmp/var/db/esximg/vibs/* /var/db/esximg/vibs/

  7. Remove the corrupt imgdb.tgz from the bootbank
    rm /bootbank/imgdb.tgz

  8. Move the working copy of imgdb.tgz into the bootbank
    cp /tmp/imgdb.tgz /bootbank/

  9. Make Config Backup
    /sbin/auto-backup.sh

  10. Reboot the host
    reboot
  11. Update host using Update Manager again

ESXi “Error loading /k.b00” “Fatal error: 33 (Inconsistent Data)

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I was deploying ESXi 6 on a new server, booting off USB thumb-drive where I put the ESXi installer. (Installer creatred with Rufus), I got the following error just a few seconds into the install

Error loading /k.b00
Compressed MD5: 23a1XXXXXXXXXX
Decompressed MD5: 00000000000000000000000000
Fatal error: 33 (Inconsistent data)

Turned out to be a bad USB drive.
Bad (usually cheap generic drives) work well for storing files, but in my experience, lack the ability to be used as install media or “Live CD’s”. I am not sure what makes one drive work over the other, but assume it has to do with the controller interface on those drives.

vSphere 6 Upgrade Fails – “The Upgrade contains the following set of conflicting VIBs:”

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I was upgrading an ESXi 5.5 host for a client and ran into some “Incompatibility” errors. They had a mix of Dell server hosts, but three of them were Dell R715’s and all three were getting upgrade errors. I first tried the update using VMware Update Manager (VUM), and made sure I was using the Dell Customized ISO, which includes Dell specific drivers. (You can download the ISO here: http://goo.gl/3UOeNV ).

After adding the ISO to a new upgrade baseline and scanning the host for updates, I was the following errors:
Compliance State: Incompatible
The upgrade contains the following set of conflicting VIBs:
Mellanox_bootbank_net-mlx4-en_1.9.9.0-1OEM.550.0.0.1331820
Remove the conflicting VIBs or use Image Builder to create a custom upgrade ISO image that contains the newer versions of the conflicting VIBs, and try to upgrade again.

Attempt to continue the upgrade and dismiss the errors, resulted in upgrade failure. Any attempt to upgrade via the CLI also failed.

So what is the problem and how do you fix it?

The problem is with incompatible drivers that are currently on the host. Drivers that aren’t supported by ESXi 6, and drivers that aren’t included in either VMware’s or Dell’s ISO.
This particular VIB is a Mellanox Infiniband HBA, which probably most of us seeing this error do not use.

To remedy this issue and proceed, we need to remove those drivers from the host.

– First, enable SSH on the host that has the issue
– Next, SSH into the host and run the following commands:

~ # esxcli software vib list | grep Mel
~ # esxcli software vib remove -n net-mlx4-en
~ # esxcli software vib remove -n net-mlx4-core
~ # reboot

It may take a min or so after running commands two and three, but it should complete successfully. After rebooting the host, proceed to upgrade via Update Manager or CLI.

After I completed the above instructions and scanned my host again with Update Manager, it found one more incompatible VIB that I had to remove on all three servers.

Compliance State: Incompatible
The upgrade contains the following set of conflicting VIBs:
VMware_bootbank_xhci-xhci_1.0-3vmw.550.3.78.3248547
Remove the conflicting VIBs or use Image Builder to create a custom upgrade ISO image that contains the newer versions of the conflicting VIBs, and try to upgrade again.

I was able to fix this in the same manner I did the previous VIB:

~ # esxcli software vib list | grep Mel
~ # esxcli software vib remove -n xhci-xhci
~ # reboot