Installing ESXi on Unsupported Hardware

You have an old computer. You want to put ESXi on it. You get errors like stalling at “Initializing IOV”, “failed loading nfs41client”, or “No Network Adapters”. Here’s how I worked around all three of those.

“Initializing IOV”
– Means your hardware doesn’t support something. When ESXi is starting up press “tab” or “shift+o” to get to the boot command line options. Then simply put in a space followed by “noIOMMU” at the end of that line.
– from http://www.digitalroadies.com/vmware-6-initializing-iov-issues/

During install or loading of the installer you see “failed loading nfs41client” or “failed loading nfs4lclient”… one of those two. And then you get a “No network adapters” at the end.
– Means you have some network card or chipset that’s not officially supported by the ESXi installer.
– Create a custom install image: https://www.v-front.de/2014/12/how-to-make-your-unsupported-nic-work.html
– I did this:
In Powershell:
– Install-Module -Name VMware.PowerCLI -Scope CurrentUser
– download this: http://vibsdepot.v-front.de/tools/ESXi-Customizer-PS-v2.5.1.ps1
– run this to find what network card you have (mine was the Realtek 8168, mentioned here: https://www.v-front.de/2014/12/how-to-make-your-unsupported-nic-work.html)
– run this: .\ESXi-Customizer-PS-v2.5.1.ps1 -v60 -vft -load net55-r8168,net51-r8169,net51-sky2
– Use rufus to create a bootable USB with the resulting ISO
– Install ESXi with that bootable USB (I had to use the “noIOMMU” additional boot option)

Hopefully it helps you 🙂