Question : 100% CPU usage in vCenter but not in taskmanager on the Windows NT 4.0 VM that has been converted

Hi,
I'm having an issue converting a Windows NT 4.0 machine from Physical to Virtual.  I haven't tried using VMWARE Converter to convert it directly yet because this will require a reboot which is not safe on this machine(very unreliable).  Anyhow,  we have Acronis True Image already installed on this machine so I created an image for it.  Here are the steps I performed...

1.  Created a new VM for Windows NT 4.0
2.  Booted in PXE and launched Acronis
3.  Restored the image
4.  Booted in BartPE and ran the VMSCSIFIX tool to send the VM drivers to Windows NT OS
5.  Boot the machine.
6.  Installed the VMWARE tools but video driver doesn't work properly
7.  Stopped all services that are no longer required such as Compaq, NIC and Tape Backup services
8.  Stopped all devices that are no longer required such as Compaq, NIC and Tape Backup devices

Machine boots fine but in vCenter is shows the CPU constantly at 100% even though within the VM in task manager it is on idle.  

I also tried another approach which was to use VMWARE converter standalone and use the Acronis Image as the file to convert but it led to the same result.

Besides trying by using Converter on the live physical machine, does anyone have any suggestions or ideas of what can be causing this?

Answer : 100% CPU usage in vCenter but not in taskmanager on the Windows NT 4.0 VM that has been converted

It's interesting, it's showing that you are using a single processor HAL already. I'm not entirely sure why this isn't handling the locks correctly but lets replace it with the Uniprocessor HAL anyways.

Okay, navigate to c:\winnt\system32 and rename ntoskrnl.exe to ntoskrnl.exe.old just to be safe.

Then copy halapic.dll and ntoskrnl.exe to c:\winnt\system32.

Change the boot.ini from:

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINNT="Windows NT Server Version 4.00" /HAL=hal.dll /KERNEL=ntoskrnl.exe /NUMPROC=1

to

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINNT="Windows NT Server Version 4.00" /HAL=halapic.dll /KERNEL=ntoskrnl.exe /NUMPROC=1

Try booting this and see if that makes it any better. Remember to change the vCPUs back to 1 and the OS back to Win NT 4 in vCenter.