This one's as much for me for future reference as anything else. I was having a hard time finding anything on Google that worked and wasn't overly complicated. Maybe I'll save someone else some time while I'm at it.
Situation: A development/test Windows 2003 server that's in a virtual machine on a VMWare ESX 3 server (I'm also using Virtual Center, but this should all hold for situations without Virtual Center and with ESX 2.x servers at least). It's been offline for a while, and is not a member of a domain in my case. Nobody seems to be able to find what the local admin account password was. Wiping and rebuilding it is an option of course, but I didn't really want to do that.
By default for Windows 2003 virtual machines, VMWare has it using the LSI logic virtual SCSI adapter rather than the Buslogic adapter. Your typical Windows account password reset program like the one found in the Emergency Boot CD (EBCD) doesn't have a driver for LSI SCSI adapters, so it won't see your virtual machine's disk.
If you shut the virtual machine down, you can reconfigure the virtual SCSI adapter as a Buslogic adapter. I don't know about how standalone ESX servers handle this change, but Virtual Center will ask a couple of times to be sure before it actually makes the change. If your Windows install was done on LSI and you switch to Buslogic, Windows will not boot..it'll bluescreen not long after the OS logo screen pops. But we're not booting into Windows now...we're going to boot up onto the password resetting tool of your choice. I know that EBCD has a driver for Buslogic adapters already so it'll boot up and see your Windows partition and do the password reset with no problems.
Instead of rebooting after the password reset, shut the virtual machine off and reset your SCSI adapter back to LSI. You'll get the same warnings about OS's having problems when you change the adapter type but it'll still do it. Then power your virtual machine back on.
It'll come back up like before, but with a known password this time. Maybe next time you'll remember to write down admin passwords even for quickie one-off test boxes that you might need later. I know I'm going to try. :D
Technorati Tags: Microsoft, VMWare, Security, Technology
Just tried it on a Windows Server 2003 R2 SP2 guest hosted on a standalone ESX 3.0.2 box. It throws what I assume to be the same questions that you're seeing and complains that "A specified parameter was not correct. ", but other than that works fine.
That sounds right. It's been a while....there isn't really any VMWare at the new job. Sometimes the tricks I find are messy but if it's getting the job done, at the end of the day that's all that matters.