Running Windows 8 or Windows Server 2012 On Esx 4

Windows 8 and Windows server 2012 will not work on Vmware ESX 4.0/4.1 until you do a little trick like on this post.

If you are using Vmware ESX 4 (4.0  or 4.1) and  want to have / install windows 8 or Windows 2012 Virtual machine on it but  you still don't decide to have VMware vSphere 5, (because only on vsphere 5, windows 8 and windows server 2012 can be created). fortunately you still be able to have Windows 8 / server 2012 on Vmware vsphere 4  with a little trick.


Download the file bios.440.rom

Create a New Virtual Machine

Set Guest Operating System as a Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2

After creating complete, don't play/ don't run it,

Extract the downloaded zip file (bios.440.rom), then copy/upload it  into the virtual machine folder (go to Storage and right click to browse datastore then upload the file)

Download the virtualmachine.vmx file (virtualmachine= name of virtual machine you created) from Virtual machine folder and edit it using notepad, add the following line at the end :

bios440.filename = "bios.440.rom"
mce.enable = TRUE
cpuid.hypervisor.v0 = FALSE
vmGenCounter.enable = FALSE

Save the virtualmachine.vmx file

Upload the virtualmachine.vmx file to virtual machine folder

Ready to install Windows 8 / Windows server 2012