Unable to remove Floppy Drive from ESXi Virtual Machine

Problem: Removing the floppy drive and saving the VM configuration, the floppy drive would automatically appear again.

Solution: Shutdown the VM and unregister it. Manually edit the vmx file, find one or more lines similar to the below and delete them:

floppy0.startConnected = “FALSE”
floppy0.clientDevice = “TRUE”
floppy0.fileName = “vmware-null-remote-floppy”

Then add a new line :
floppy0.present = “FALSE”

Save and overwrite the old vmx file in the datastore, then re-register the VM. Your floppy drive should now be gone.

Microsoft Project License Error Loop

We had Project Professional (specifically 2016 version 1908) running on Windows Server 2012 R2.  Initially Project was installed with SharedComputerLicensing enabled. Later we reinstalled it via Office Deployment Tool and shared computer activation disabled in order to utilize volume licensing (rather than subscription).

The problem was a user was getting a license error loop that would repeat every time Project was launched. Project was still usable in this state, but the error was causing confusion. Uninstalling Project and installing fresh did not resolve the issue.

We noticed you just updated your license. Please reboot Microsoft Project for the changes to take effect.

The root cause was this particular user had run Project in the past when it had been installed with SharedComputerLicensing enabled.   Deleting the user profile from the system resolved the error loop.

Ubuntu 20.04 on ESXi Generating multipathd Errors

Brand new install of Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa) running as a virtual machine on ESXi was generating a lot of errors in syslog like the below

multipathd[711]: sda: failed to get udev uid: Invalid argument
multipathd[711]: sda: failed to get sysfs uid: Invalid argument
multipathd[711]: sda: failed to get sgio uid: No such file or directory
multipathd[711]: sda: add missing path

The solution is to edit the configuration of the virtual machine using the steps shownb elow for ESXi 6.7. Source https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2441797

  1. Shut down the VM
  2. Edit the VM -> Edit settings -> VM Options
  3. Under Advanced ->Configuration Parameters -> click Edit Configuration button
  4. Add a new parameter with following properties:
    Key: disk.EnableUUID
    Value: TRUE
  5. Click OK -> Save
  6. Power on the VM and confirm the errors have stopped in /var/log/syslog