ESXi 4.1 installation failed

When ESXi 4.0 just came out I was testing it in my home lab, installing it on both USB stick and HDD on different "not supported" hardware including even my IBM Laptop - never had any problem with installation.

When ESXi 4.1 came out I upgraded my main ESXi 4.0 server without any problem whatsoever. However, when I decided to do a fresh install on my secondary ESXi 4.0 host few days later I got the following error message: 

The installation operation has encountered a fatal error:

Unable to find system image to install.

This is due to the image not being mounted correctly or the CD-ROM is not being supported.

The following system information will assist VMware team with your problem. Please record your information before proceeding:

System Information

Manufacturer:

Model:

Tag:

BIOS Rev:

That brought some good memories back from DOS era. No, seriously. I had not seen an "incompatible" CD-ROM for at least last 15-20 years! I take off my hat to VMware programmers - I have no clue how to make CD-ROM "incompatible" on purpose nowadays (maybe they're checking manufacturer against "white list" but I cannot believe they're doing it - that would be too easy).

Anyways, just for curiosity sake, here is what I tried
1. Replaced current IDE CD-ROM with another IDE one (it was actually DVD ROM) - didn't help

2. Replaced current IDE DVD-ROM with a SATA one - didn't help

3. Created bootable USB stick and booted from it - same error message

4. Connected cheap portable USB DVD-ROM - finally it worked !!!

Bottom line:
you basically have 3 options:

1. Install ESXi 4.1 on a USB stick on some "compatible" hardware, take USB stick out and use it on your hardware. Yes you can do it since it's not hardware dependent.... unless you use a custom kernel which is another story.

2. Install ESXi 4.0 first and then upgrade it to ESXi 4.1

3. Try an external USB CD-ROM (I cannot guarantee it will work - maybe VMware simply "liked" the manufacturer of my cheap external CD-ROM)

HP Team NIC RDP issue

Symptoms:
After dissolving HP NIC Team and running “netsh interface tcp reset” command (I was troubleshooting  network issues with Windows NLB) Windows 2008 Remote Desktop stops working with all services running and Remote Desktop enabled.

“Netstat -a –n” shows there is no service listening on rdp port 3389.

If you open to Remote Desktop Session Host Configuration -> Right Click on RDP-TCP, select Network Adapter tab - you get the following error:

 

And it’s impossible to select the network adapter or change Maximum connections, although there is nothing wrong with the network.

Here is the fix:
1. Set the following registry value to 0

2. Restart Remote Desktop Service

3. Go to Remote Desktop Session Host Configuration -> Right Click on RDP-TCP , select Network Adapter tab, make sure “All network Adapters” is selected and set Maximum connections to “2”