VMWare ESX - Creating a Windows XP VM and getting error: "Setup did not find any hard disk drives installed in your computer."

if you are getting this error, no need to worry just click here

VMware ESX Installation Error: "The Installer is Unable to find any supported network devices"

I was trying to install ESX 3.0 on Dell Optiplex 745 and during the installation following error came:
"The Installer is Unable to find any supported network devices"

This error clearly says that my NIC card is not supported by ESX and after this installation ends up with reboot

VMware ESX Server uses "VMKernel" to directly address and control hardware. Because of this, ESX does not support every type of hardware.
Basically ESX is projected to run on Servers not on Desktop but I was trying to evaluate it before purchasing hardware and software.
Here is the link from where you can verify whether your environment is feasible for ESX or Not.
http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi3_systems_guide.pdf

I tried it on all type of Desktop machines available with me and luckily it worked on Dell Optiplex GX620.

Using Custom Drivers with Windows XP

Last week i was installing Windows XP on my Dell PE 1950.

I started with usual process, inserted bootable Windows XP disk and booted from CD-Rom. Installation process started smoothly but i was socked when it came to disk selection screen, there was no disk available message. after doing some googling i came to know that my dell server is having SAS raid controller and normal XP disk doesn't holds driver for same.

My Dell server servers was having "Dell SAS 6/iR Integrated Controller". i downloaded drivers from same from ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/SAS-RAID/R165652.exe

The Very common process to supply custom drivers to windows XP is Put your drivers into Floppy drive and press "F6' you see status message "Press F6 if you need to install a third party SCSI or RAID driver...." during the windows installation and once you will press F6 drivers will be load from floppy. but in my case i didn't had floppy drive in my server. so i was not able to go with this option.

again after doing some googling i found that dell provides a utility to prepare drivers in USB instead of floppy. i used this utility and loaded my SAS drivers during the windows installation and finally i got my hard disks listed on disk selection screen. after that installation went ahead smoothly.

I had many Dell servers where i had to install the XP so i was looking for some utility to merge my drivers into XP disk itself and i got nLite. using nLight i merged my drivers into XP disk itself and now i can install XP on my all servers without any additional drivers as all needed drives are present in disk itself.