As this seems to be a very common issue with VMware Converter, and it can have multiple causes, I will try to help those who get to this situation and can't resolve it. The error message itself is not clear, but usually the problem resides on the fact that the Converter Agent (if you are converting a phýsical and/or power on machine) or Worker (if converting a set of files from another VMware product, or an OVA/OVF file) can't read the source machine disk, or some configuration file inside it. Based on that, the best medicine is to know where to look for the error.
Basic example
Trying to convert a VMware Workstation VM to a vCenter Server. Got the error: "Unable to obtain hardware information for the selected machine", as the screeshot stands:
The first most important thing to do is to "Export diagnostic logs", so you will keep the troubleshooting data even after finishing the program or performing other conversions. Is important to note that keeping the diagnostig logs will avoid logs contamination by other operations. Also keep note of the time (hour, minutes) the error was reported.
First thing to do is to uncompress the logs:
~/temp/converter# ls
ConverterDiagnostics20130912092012.zip
~/temp/converter# unzip ConverterDiagnostics20130912092012.zip
Archive: ConverterDiagnostics20130912092012.zip
inflating: vmware-converter-server-1.log
extracting: worker-source-diagnostics-gye.zip
extracting: converter-gui-1.log.gz
extracting: converter-gui-2.log.gz
extracting: converter-gui-3.log.gz
extracting: converter-gui-4.log.gz
extracting: converter-gui-5.log.gz
extracting: converter-gui-6.log.gz
extracting: converter-gui-7.log.gz
inflating: converter-gui-8.log
~/temp/converter#
(I am using Linux, feel free to use your OS to open files and manipulate them). For this example, I have uncompressed the ConverterDiagnostics20130912092012.zip file and got the listed files. Including worker-source-diagnostics-gye.zip, which is the file where the worker logs reside. The worker is the process that runs when the source is directly accessible to the Converter software - if not, it uses the Converter Agent, that I will mention forward.
Uncompressing the worker logs, you will get some additional files, starting with vmware-converter-worker*.log. Checking fot the mos recent of these files, I could get to the following error:
2013-09-10T17:59:38.170-03:00 [09824 info 'Default'] Parsing C:\Users\anyuser\Desktop\VM\Lite.vmwarevm\Lite.vmx
2013-09-10T17:59:38.179-03:00 [09824 error 'Default'] Sysimgbase_DiskLib_OpenWithPassPhrase failed on disk file 'C:\Users\anyuser\Desktop\VM\Lite.vmwarevm\Virtual Disk.vmdk' with 'The system cannot find the file specified' (error code:25)
The error points to the fact that Converter is parsing the VMX file, but could not find a specific VMDK file. Checking the files I have, could see the following list:
Lite.vmx
Virtual Disk-s007.vmdk
Virtual Disk-s008.vmdk
Virtual Disk-s009.vmdk
Virtual Disk-s010.vmdk
Virtual Disk-s011.vmdk
Virtual Disk.vmdk
So, Virtual Disk.vmdk exists. I verified and I could open the file, and read it, so no permission problem (this could be a potential problem). Opening the Virtual Disk.vmdk file,I could see it pointed to several VMDKs (as it was a sparse 2GB type):
Virtual Disk-s001.vmdk
Virtual Disk-s002.vmdk
Virtual Disk-s003.vmdk
Virtual Disk-s004.vmdk
Virtual Disk-s005.vmdk
Virtual Disk-s006.vmdk
Virtual Disk-s007.vmdk
Virtual Disk-s008.vmdk
Virtual Disk-s009.vmdk
Virtual Disk-s010.vmdk
Virtual Disk-s011.vmdk
So, basically, in this case, there were 6 files missing (1 to 6). Something wrong happened on my copy. Just copied again files 1 to 6 and all worked as expected.
Remote conversions
When converting remote machines, there is a sowftware that is installed on the machine to be converted, named VMware Converter Agent. The logs for this agent are stored at %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\VMware\VMware vCenter Converter Standalone Agent\logs\vmware-converter-agent-1.log, and usually are the ones that will help to troubleshoot the issue. One example can be seen on my last post, clicking here.
In case of need, I will be glad to try to help if you send me logs attached (you can create a VMware Communities discussion and send me the link also). You can find me on twitter: @mtsoares42 or here at Communities.
Hope this helps.