Failure to Verify VMs With EFI Firmware to Windows Server 2012 R2

Product version: 10.5

Last modified: 12 November 2021

Problem

When attempting to recover/replicate/flash boot a VM to Windows Server 2012 R2, the following error appears:

Additional steps are needed to start [VM Name] VM

Verification of VMs with EFI firmware to Windows Server 2012 R2 is not fully supported. Additional steps are required to run the [VM Name] VM. Contact support for more information.

Solution

After multiple reinstalls or reboots of the same VM, one or multiple .efi files may appear in your VM settings → Firmware menu. To work around this when recovering/replicating/flash booting a VM to Windows Server 2012 R2, you need to delete these files to reset to a compatible boot order (for example, set 'Hard Drive' to primary boot). Enter the following commands in powershell, replacing <Your VM Name> with the actual virtual machine name:

$VMName = "<Your VM name>"

Get-VMFirmware -VMName $VMName |ForEach-Object {Set-VMFirmware -BootOrder ($_.Bootorder | Where-Object {$_.BootType -ne 'File'}) $_ }

This will remove any items with the "File" type from the VM's boot order settings, including EFI firmware files. Reconfigure the boot order if necessary and try starting the recovery/replication/flash boot job again.