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.
The next conversion attempt was clean. The driver started. The clone synced block by block. and stared at the ceiling.
She closed her laptop, leaned back, and stared at the ceiling. and stared at the ceiling.