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pchee
Staff
pchee
Staff
January 6, 2026

Technical Tip: Custom VM constantly stuck in status 'Initializing'

  • January 6, 2026
  • 0 replies
  • 259 views
Description This article describes what to check when a Custom VM is constantly stuck in status 'Initializing'.
Scope FortiSandbox Custom VM.
Solution

Symptom to check:

  1. Custom VM is constantly stuck in status 'Initializing' when assigning a Clone Number.
                                                                                                                                              
    TAC Vmstatus.jpg                                                                                  
  2. Navigate under VM Events and notice FortiSandbox takes an extremely long period of time to successfully prepare a VM.
                                                                            

TAC VMEvents.jpg

 

Steps to rectify:

  1. Verify the VM image has at least 5 GB of free space, while it does not exceed the supported maximum file size of 30GB.
  2. Change the VDI file to the dynamic size format and expand the disk size to 25GB (This operation is to make more free space for installing Windows updates).
  3. Run 'services.msc' to check and make sure to disable the Windows update service again.
  4. Allocate at least 2 CPUs and 4096 MB of memory to the custom VM by using the Edit mode with the following CLI:

 

vm-customized -cn -tftp -s<IP.addr> -f/custvm/ExampleWIN10_updated.vdi -voWindows10_64 -vnNCBWIN10 -kdeb1b9345e3099d6d5b94367bc344b1c -r -vc2 -vm4096​
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