For the last year or so I’ve been running windows 7 under ESXi and due to a few issues I’ve had to re-install more than once. Each time I go through the install process I seem to bump into a problem with the harddrive configuration for the VM that causes the install process to take significantly longer (we’re talking days, not hours…) The problem is that ESXi defaults to a SCSI harddisk and it would seem Windows 7 much prefers the IDE disk. A quick switch of disks and my installs are back to normal speeds.
I figured I’d dump this here so I’d have a place to look next time I do this and incase someone else is having the same issues.
I had a very similar problem, changed drives and worked for me also. Strange thing though, first time around ( install ) every thing was fine and dandy.
I’ve had other issues with Win7 under ESXi too, that seem to happen after the initial install. I think what may be happening is that Microsoft pushes out some update that causes issues with the virtualization. I’ve got nothing to back that up tho :P