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How to solve the VMware “PCI to PCI bridge detected” install loop

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Have you ever P2Ved a server to an ESX cluster or converted a VMware Workstation VM into a VMware ESX 3.5 or vSphere 4.0 VM and come across this horrible Found New Hardware message that won’t go away.  Here’s a screenshot of a Windows 2000 Advanced Server that I had to fix and P2V after a catastrophic disaster (RAID failure) displaying this message:

Yes, it’s annoying and it seems like it will never go away.  You keep click on install and it keeps detecting after sucessfully installing as if it’s in a loop.  But the reality of it is that it’s not in a loop.  As silly as it sounds, you have to install it 32 times and it will finally go away! :)

The reason for this is because when you update the VM’s virtual hardware (specifically version 7 VMs from my experience), it comes with 32 separate PCI-to-PCI bridge devices that Windows detects and wants to install.  The only workaround I have found so far is to just sit there and install all 32 manually.  Or you can try editing your VMX and set:

pciBridge.present = False

which should work though I’ve never tried it personally.  Don’t want to potentially break something when it takes all of 2 minutes to install all 32 bridges.  Give it a shot and let me know if that fixes it for you guys. :)

More of my posts you might like:

  1. VMware vSphere PowerCLI scripts to make your ESX Admin life easier
  2. Poor Man’s ESX and ESXi image level backups aka GhettoVCB
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  1. ccapone11
    April 21st, 2010 at 10:05 | #1

    Thanks for the tip. I am new to VM and this was my first P2V. This was driving me crazy.

  2. Doophes
    August 25th, 2010 at 05:31 | #2

    Dude, that is the weirdenst troubleshooting ever.
    but it works. :)
    thanks mite.

  3. August 25th, 2010 at 23:58 | #3

    @Doophes
    You are very welcome!

  4. chrisb915
    October 18th, 2010 at 12:06 | #4

    When the found new hardware wizard asks to go on the web, click no, and save your self some time.

  5. November 11th, 2010 at 16:03 | #5

    Did you guys ever try to do this for 10-20 VMs? gotta love VMware at this point…

  6. December 12th, 2010 at 18:36 | #6

    Hey thanks for this! I was about to go nuts over this one.

    Dan
    Dan Thompson recently posted..One bad treatment left

  7. Frank Esposito
    January 8th, 2011 at 12:35 | #7

    Hello … I found lines in my vmx file like

    pciBridge?.present = …

    where ? is a digit — will your fix superceed those lines?

    Thanks

  8. Jeremy Perez
    February 4th, 2011 at 03:53 | #8

    Thanks,
    this tip helped me. I used the first option (32 clic)

  9. TLS
    May 5th, 2011 at 03:59 | #9

    Thanks!

    I had the same problem with a Win 98 virtual machine I converted from MS Virtual PC. The 32 click option was the only way to get it work under VMWare.

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