Continuing the discussion from [Tutorial] ZimaOS Installation and Upgrade Guide:
I followed the procedure here for installing in VMWare, however it doesn’t work. After the install it takes me to just a black screen with “Booting ‘Slot A (ok = 0, Try = 0)’”, then a just a black screen with a flashing cursor. I cannot get into Zima.
Hi, to help others understand and respond quickly, please use the format below when posting an issue.
Description
Explain what’s happening in simple terms.
Steps to Reproduce
List the exact steps that lead to the issue. I suggest you reproduce it again and record it as a video.
(Screenshots are helpful, videos or screen recordings are even better.)
Troubleshooting Tried
Describe what you’ve already done to fix it.
(Include visuals if possible.)
System Details
Add your hardware specs, ZimaOS version.
Thank you for taking the time to include these details, it helps everyone resolve issues faster and keeps the community running smoothly.
Not sure what more I can add. I followed the instructions provided in this forum to install ZimaOS on VMware workstation and it didn’t work. After the install, which seemed to go to completion, I restarted the VM and got a black screen with “Booting ‘Slot A (ok = 0, Try = 0)’”, then a just a black screen with a flashing cursor…nothing more.
As I said it was a VM, I followed the exact steps and used the recommended settings mentioned in the provided instructions (e.g. 32GB Hard drive, 4 CPUs, enabled UEFI, etc.). I have not been able to fix it so I cannot provide any more details.
Has anyone else tried installing ZimaOS on VMWare with these instructions? Did it work for you?
I suggest you add the screen record. So that I can help you locate possible issues with the video. Is it convenient? Look forward to your feedback.
I have ZimaOS installed on a Proxmox VM. Not knowing what the VMware server details look like, you’re going to have to post some screenshots, or a screen recording like it was suggested.
It’s very hard to GUESS at what could be wrong with a users setup/installs without SOME kind of details to be able to investigate and issue.
There is no need to guess about what I did. I followed the procedure provided on this forum here:
[Tutorial] ZimaOS Installation and Upgrade Guide (Method 2: Install on a Virtual Machine Platform)
Any screen shots I show would be exactly what is explained in this procedure.
My VM settings were as described in the procedure:
This method works until the part about…“Start the virtual machine. It will automatically boot from the ISO image and begin the installation. The process is fully automatic. After installation, the virtual machine will restart into ZimaOS.”
In my case, the VM does not restart, instead, I get a black screen with “Booting ‘Slot A (ok = 0, Try = 0)’”, which then disappears and then a just a black screen with a flashing cursor.
I hope this explanation helps.
First of all..
I did not say, it’s hard to guess “what you did” I said.. It was hard to guess what could be wrong..
It’s like this bro…
You have a car, it has issues, you contact the dealership, they tell you what to do, you follow the instructions 100%. It does NOT fix it.
You take it to a mechanic, tell him you did everything by the book from what the dealer told you, but it’s still not working.
What does the mechanic do from that point? Just guess at what could be wrong, you go back and forth, or… Does he need to actually look at the vehicle, and test drive it, to get his own ideas what the issue is.
My point being is.. Sometimes things don’t work exactly like they should, all systems can be different or have different quirks. The DEV was trying to help you, by asking you to provide some more info (video/screenshots) of what was going on, so the “Mechanic” in the scenario can diagnos your issues.
Anyway…
Have a great day
I did provide the information. Any screenshots/video would show the exact same information. What more do you need?
Have you actually tried following the procedure that I referred to? You might just see the same issue I have experienced.
I am just a regular user here, so this will be my last post reply about this.
So, you posted your problems, the DEV read them, and based on what you posted, they couldn’t figure out what was going on. If they could have, they would have answered instantly.
So, to go even further to help YOU, they asked for more info, such as a video, to see what was possibly happening.
Would you rather someone just read what you posted, not know what is causing the issue, and say:
Sorry, have no clue what is wrong, goodbye.
Or would you rather them ask for more info to help YOU out? It’s not for THEM, it’s for YOU. If you don’t “have the time to invest” in some problem solving, then why would they even want to invest in trying to help YOU?
Again, this is my last reply, I hope you get your ZimaOS going
Take care
Try increasing your RAM allocation to at least 4GB to 8GB.
Thanks I tried increasing to 8GB, it didn’t solve this.
I finally managed to get a video recording of this process.
Did you try using arrow key to move highlighted line down to slot B? And letting it boot from that?
Yes, I tried that. It didn’t help. I got error “Unknown file system.” “Press any key to continue…”
Sorry MjTech, I tried to give as much information as I could. You and others on here might think it is a “walk in the park” to just record a video, but I am not that familiar with recording videos from my desktop. But I gave it a try. It took me several hours to try and figure out how to use OBS to record this issue - it was not as straight forward as you might think! I had to learn about creating scenes and sources in OBS to be able to show all of the different windows that come up when using VMWare, and it took way more time than I actually wanted to. So please think about this when you ask people here to “just upload a recording” Not everyone here is at your skill level or as knowledgeable as you might be. And actually I think your response was also quite rude. But thanks anyway.
The recording has been uploaded.
Hello Giorgio. I was finally able to create a video showing this issue. I have uploaded it to this topic thread. It took a lot of my time as I am not that familiar with recording my desktop and had to learn how to do it (which wasn’t as easy as one might think!). Its not the best, but I hope it shows what you need.
Looking forward to your reply.
From the GRUB screen in your video, both Slot A and Slot B show:
ok = 0
On a successful install, both of these should be ok = 1.
Because neither slot is valid, ZimaOS has nothing to boot, which is why it drops to a black screen with a flashing cursor.
I believe this indicates the installer couldn’t properly create the system slot, likely due to VMware’s hardware abstraction. ZimaOS expects direct access to storage, so I think this is why the installation cannot complete correctly.
I suggest running ZimaOS on bare-metal, or KVM/QEMU if you need to virtualise.
I found this post which is relative to your installation approach:
Thanks for taking the video.
May I ask why your desktop looks different from a standard one? Are you running the Windows OS inside a virtual machine (VM) or on a cloud-based Windows instance? If so, I would suggest you use a local, bare-metal installation instead.
Or, do you turn off many of the features that a normal one would provide by default?
Please provide the hardware specs of the Windows OS.
Look forward to your feedback.
Hi Giorgio. I am not sure what you mean. What is different? I am using Windows 11 Pro 25H2 as my main computer (bare-metal install - not in a VM), but what you are seeing in the video is VMWare Pro workstation 25H2. The video is a window capture so you are only seeing the active windows, not the entire Windows desktop. I am trying to run Zima in a VM (as I have mentioned many times before). There is nothing odd about what I am doing, in fact the instructions I am using are for running ZimaOS in VMWare - exactly as described in the post.
The Windows OS is 25H2 running on AMD Ryzan 9 3950X 16-Core, 64GB RAM. Not sure what this has to do with anything about my issue, as I have followed the procedure for installing ZimaOS on VMWare. I have other VMs that run just fine on my Windows machine - It has plenty of resources to do so. ZimaOS is the only OS I can’t seem to get to work in a VM.
Thanks gelbuilding. I was wanting to rum ZimaOS in a VM not on bar metal (at least for now). I am not familiar with KVM/QEMU. So are you saying ZimaOS will not run on this version of VMWare (25H2, which is the newest one available)?
I had a look at the post you attached. I will try converting the ZimaOS img file to VDMK and see if that works.
Thanks.