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Troubleshooting a virtual machine that stops responding or fails when the CD-ROM entry is ATAPI

Symptoms

A virtual machine stops responding or fails after being VMotioned between ESX hosts
Console screen is black
Console is unresponsive
Virtual machine is powered off, but was not manually instructed to do so

Resolution

When the CD-ROM is set to ATAPI, migrations between hosts cause the virtual machine to attempt to reconnect to a resource (the CD) that is unavailable on the new host. For this reason the virtual machine may become unresponsive, or fail entirely.

To ensure the virtual machine is configured properly:

Locate the virtual machine in the VMware VirtualCenter.
Right-click on the virtual machine and select Edit Settings.
Choose CD/DVD Drive 1 from the list provided. The options for the drive's configuration are presented on the right of the screen.
Reconfigure the virtual machine to connect a Datastore ISO file.
Ensure Connected is deselected.
Press OK to save the settings.
Repeat steps 3-6 for each configured CD/DVD on the virtual machine.
Power on the virtual machine.

If the virtual machine was set to "ATAPI", it is possible that this setting was defined by a script that imports the virtual machines. If this is the case, update the script to ensure it does not continue to create virtual machines that experience this issue.

Additional Information

For more information, see Troubleshooting a virtual machine that is unresponsive because of configuration issues (1007814).

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