Event Warning ID: 3 logged after P2V of physical hosts

While this warning messaging doesn’t really affect a virtualized physical host after you’ve successfully P2V-ed it, I personally prefer clean Windows event logs because it makes troubleshooting errors in the future better.

Problem

You’ve successfully virtualized a physical host but notice that you continuously get a warning logged in your System logs:

Source: vmdebug

Type: Warning

Event ID: 3

Solution

There’s actually a VMware KB for this: http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1007652

Resolution

The virtual machine debug driver is not required in an ESX host. The driver is used for record/play functions in Fusion and Workstation products.

To prevent the message from appearing, browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\vmdebug and change the Start key from 1 to 4. This disables it.

The KB notes a different version than the one in my screenshot (7.3.3.2 vs 7.3.4.3) but I’ve tried editing the registry keys as noted in the KB and it does remove the warning.

Fairly simple fix.