Asus P5E WS Pro

Any other ideas? Or am I just stuck?

OK. nothing for a while. I guess maybe I should re-try it again when 4.1U1 comes out?

Just to clarify things
- you tried the repair process, but it would hang at the install options screen?
- was this a 4.0 install - then upgrade to 4.0 u2 ? Or something similar. It's not an upgrade from 3.5 is it?

Right, I was unable to select the repair (or install) option.

It was upgraded from 4.0 -> 4.0U2

I *think* I did upgrade from 3.5.1 -> 4.0

It's a little odd that the 4.0U2 CD would hang. Are you disabling ACPI for the vmkernel or setting any other options (in boot.cfg or via advanced settings)?

VMKernel.Boot.ACPI is in fact unchecked in my advanced settings.

If you boot from the CD again you might try passing that option to the installer vmkernel.

http://www.vm-help.com/esx40i/vmkernel_boot_options.php

Got it.

So, I bet that is the problem with the upgrade to 4.1; that noACPI is missing.

Any idea how I might be able to include that in the upgrade process so that when it boots to 4.1 for the first time is has that kernel flag set already?

If 4.1 is correctly installed to what gets mounted as /altbookbank you can

1) Create a file in /altbootbank so that you can identify it later.
2) Boot ESXi with a Linux live CD and mount partition 1 and 2. See the example here - http://www.vm-help.com/esx/esx3i/disabl ... tartup.php.
3) Once you have figured out which partition is /altbootbank - edit boot.cfg to add the option.
4) Reboot and at the initial ESXi boot menu press shift+R to revert back to the prior system image (which in this case would be the 4.1 install).

You could also try this
Boot ESXi, use the revert option and pass the vmkernel option as described in the prior link. I don't know if you can do both at the same time though.