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 🙂