During a server-consolidation project, a systems administrator uses a physical-to-virtual (P2V) utility to migrate a legacy Windows Server 2012 R2 file server from aging hardware into a new VMware vSphere cluster. The conversion reports success, but on first power-on the virtual machine crashes almost immediately with a blue screen that displays:
STOP 0x0000007B - INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE
No additional configuration changes were made to the VM after the conversion completed. Which of the following is the MOST likely reason the operating system cannot boot?
The virtual SCSI controller selected during conversion (for example, VMware Paravirtual) is not supported by the storage drivers already present in the guest OS.
The P2V process changed the server's MAC address, preventing the OS from contacting a domain controller during startup.
Dynamic hot-add memory was enabled, leaving the VM with less physical RAM than the operating system requires.
The VM was configured with UEFI firmware even though the source server used legacy BIOS, causing Secure Boot to block the loader.
A STOP 0x7B (INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE) error appears when Windows cannot load a storage driver that can read the boot volume. During P2V conversions, the tool may assign a different virtual SCSI controller (for example, VMware Paravirtual or LSI Logic) than the physical adapter the source OS was using. Because the Windows Server 2012 R2 installation does not already contain that specific miniport driver, it cannot reach the system volume early in the boot sequence and halts with 0x7B.
The other options do not typically trigger a 0x7B stop: switching BIOS/UEFI modes produces distinct bootloader errors, missing MAC or domain connectivity issues occur well after the kernel loads, and dynamic memory settings would cause performance problems or later crashes, not an inaccessible boot device during early start-up.
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