Converting from Hyper-V using VMWare Converter: Take 2

I ran into another cause of the dreaded “Unable to obtain hardware information” when trying to convert some VMs from a Hyper-V 2012 server. Turns out that VMware Converter will throw this error if the VM is using the newer .vhdx virtual disk format instead of .vhd.

To get around it, convert the disks to .vhd (because Hyper-V server is a core server, I used the PowerShell cmdlet "Convert-VHD".

Power down the VM

Convert the vhdx to vhd using the command: Convert-VHD - Path C:\Path\To\Virtual\Drive\VMname.vhdx -DestinationPath C:\Path\To\Virtual\Drive\VMname.vhd

Reconfigure the VM. Detach the old vhdx drive, attach the vhd drive.

Run converter again.

Presto!

Converting from Hyper-V using VMWare Converter

Ran into this very issue that was blogged about here: http://www.techromeo.com/?p=115

Lots of head scratching on this one.  As usual, I took the long way around so I figured I had to share it.
Problem:  When using the new VMware Converter Standalone, running on Windows 2008R2, to convert Hyper-V machines, I would receive the error “Unable to obtain hardware information”.
Solution:  On the folder on the Hyper-V host that contains the vhd’s, set the NTFS permissions so that the local Users group has full control, rather than the default read permissions.
Background:  It appears that VMware converter creates a local account on the machine it is installed on.  I tried running Converter locally on the Hyper-V host and setting explicit permissions to that local account.  Also keep in mind that Converter will ask you for credential to connect to the Hyper-V host and will not work without them.  I also tried to set the permissions to the machine account to that of the machine running converter.

 Good to know!