XPe on ESX 3.x
So, after I posted my method for building and testing XPe images in Workstation, I was asked to get my XPe VMs working in ESX as well. ESX uses an older version of VMware’s Virtual Hardware, so XPe VMs I created with my previous method will not run if transferred directly to an ESX machine.
Creating the virtual hardware component is pretty straightforward, and follows the same general process as my previous guide. For your convenience, I’ve uploaded my component that I created running XP on ESX.
However, just the component isn’t enough for ESX. ESX 3.x doesn’t support virtual IDE hard drives. Likewise, Windows XPe doesn’t support SCSI drives. So, you’ll have to install the VMware SCSI driver. During a normal XP installation, you can do this by pressing F6 during installation and loading the drivers from a floppy, but because you build XPe rather than installing it, you have to componetize the driver. Again, I’ve already done this for you.
If this doesn’t work for you, you can download the floppy image containing the driver from VMware.com, extract it, and then import the vmscsi.inf file into the XPe Component Designer.
Once you have both the vmware4 and vmscsi components added to your XPe profile, run dependency checks to pull in the required components and build the image like you did in the last guide. After that, move the Virtual Machine onto your ESX box (assuming you didn’t create it there) and fire it up.