Vmware Vcenter Converter Standalone Unable To Start The Change Tracking Driver Info

She tried the easy fix first: reboot the source server. The app team had said "no reboots until Q4," but Sarah had learned that "critical" sometimes meant "we forgot the admin password." She rebooted anyway.

Bingo. The server had Hyper-V role installed (even though no VMs were running) and Device Guard enabled via group policy. Hyper-V and VMware’s change tracking driver cannot coexist—they fight for the same virtualization primitives.

She launched VMware vCenter Converter Standalone 6.2, clicked "Convert Machine," entered the source credentials, and hit next. The pre-check screen looked good—enough disk space, network reachable, agent uploaded. Then she clicked "Finish." She tried the easy fix first: reboot the source server

At 2:13 AM, the conversion finished. She shut down the source, powered on the VM, and the app came up without a hitch.

A quick sc query vstor2-mntapi10-shared showed the driver service wasn't there either. The server had Hyper-V role installed (even though

The next conversion attempt was clean. The driver started. The clone synced block by block.

She uninstalled Converter completely from the source machine (cleanup with Converter standalone clean-up utility ), deleted leftover VMware folders from ProgramData and AppData\Local , then reinstalled. Still broken. That kernel-level driver used by Converter

ERROR: Failed to install change tracking driver. Error 577: Windows cannot verify the digital signature for this driver. A recent hardware or software change might have installed a file that is signed incorrectly or damaged. Error 577. Signature validation failure.

She disabled the AV real-time scanner temporarily. No change.

Sarah sighed. Not this again. She opened her browser and started the late-night ritual. The VMware forums were full of similar stories—admins stranded at the same 5% wall. Change tracking. That kernel-level driver used by Converter, Backup APIs, and replication tools to monitor disk block modifications. Without it, no incremental sync, no hot cloning. Just failure.

This time, the driver installed. The progress bar jumped from 5% to 15%.