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Setup did not find any hard disk drives installed in your computer

Situation: when trying to install VMware ESX 3.5, you may receive this message: “Setup did not find any hard disk drives installed in your computer”

Cause: the hard disk controller drivers for the XP have not been installed.

There are two types of SCSI controller types available in VMware ESX.  They are ‘BusLogic’ or ‘LSI Logic’. By the default, the ESX VM uses the ‘BusLogic’ SCSI controller type when installing Windows XP. The Windows XP CD doesn’t contain the drivers for either of these controllers. Using an LSI Logic SCSI controller type has been shown to provide faster performance over that of a BusLogic controller type.

Resolution: To provide the correct drivers for Windows XP, please follow these steps:

1. Download the flp (floppy disk) images from these links:

LSI Logic XP Driver

Bus Logic XP Driver

Or http://download3.vmware.com/software/vmscsi-1.2.0.4.flp.

2 Upload the flp file(s) to your data/ISO store used by your ESX server.

• If you are using an ESX host and the Virtual Infrastructure client:
  1. Right-click the virtual machine from the Inventory pane.
  2. Click Edit settings.
  3. Click the virtual floppy drive and select Connected.
  4. Select Use floppy image.
  5. Browse to the location /vmimages.
  6. Select the file vmscsi-1.2.x.x.flp.
• If you are using VMware Lab Manager the file is available from the media library.
  
  To insert the floppy disk into the virtual machine:
  
  
  1. From the virtual machine console window, move the pointer over the virtual machine name and click Insert Floppy.
  2. From the Media Library menu, select (LMStorage1) vmscsi-1.2.0.4.flp.
  3. Click Use.

3. From within the XP installations Virtual Machine settings, edit the floppy disk settings and select the flp file containing the SCSI Controller driver you wish to use during the installation process. 

4. Power on the virtual machine and open a console view of the virtual machine.

5. Click in the console to assign keyboard control to the virtual machine.

6. When the blue Windows setup screen appears, press F6 when prompted.

7. When prompted for additional drivers, press S.

8. Press Enter to select the VMware SCSI Controller driver, and then Enter again to continue setup.

9. Complete Windows XP setup normally from this point.

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