Upgrade 2012R2 Core to 2016 Core blank window

Hypervisor:

VMWare ESXI 6 update 2

Original guest: Windows Server 2012 R2 Core

New: Windows Server 2016

Loaded the ISO in the guest and typed the following command:

d:\
setup.exe /auto upgrade /compat ignorewarning /DynamicUpdate enable

Notice use of /compat ignorewarning

Notice that adding /quiet does NOT work, there's no window (duh...), and there's no setup.exe running. Waiting 15 minutes and rebooting does not trigger an installation.

I then put in product key and set Windows Server 2016 w/o the Desktop Experience.

Windows setup starts, but in the end I'm greeted with a blank window.

Any way to get around that?

Solution 1:

I finally found the solution.

In my case I had to stop all the running VM's before starting the setup and that did the trick.