The dreaded bluescreen shows its face on VMware. This morning I encountered an error within my homelab while performing some disk space cleanup by deleting old snapshots. I was pretty shocked when I went to power on my Domain Controller that just worked before but now was encountering bluescreen after I deleted all the old snapshots but the latest one. After searching online, I found a post from 2008 that documented this exact issue, but it does not detail the root cause.
Why did this occur? I am not sure at this time, but this VM/Domain Controller has endured through
- Had multiple old snapshots dating back over 1 year.
- Went through multiple VMware Version Upgrades
- Deleted all older snapshots except for the latest one.
Steps to Fix
- Power on the machine and let the machine load until you get to the screen below and select “Troubleshoot“. This is so we can access the CMD Prompt for safe mode.
Notice: If you have an older operating system you may need to restart your VM and tap F8 to get into "Safe Mode with Command Prompt". You can then proceed to step 5.
- Select “Command Prompt“
- Select the Administrator account you want to logon with. I am selecting “Administrator” which is the only option available.
- Type in the password for this account and press “Continue“
- At the CMD Screen type in the following:
c: cd windows cd NTDS
- Run “dir” to get the list of log files in the directory
- Next we are going to delete all these bad log files.
del *.log
- Type “exit” and press enter.
- Now click “Continue“
- Your VM machine will now start correctly.
