Issues after moving Virtual Machines from one Hyper-V parent (host) to another

If you move one or more of your virtual machines (VM) from one Hyper-V parent to another and the VM begins experiencing issues, it could be because the version level of Hyper-V between the two parents is different, and thus the version of the Integration Services may be different. This can result in some strange and unwanted behavior.

I recently experienced an issue in which I moved a VM from one parent that I was planning on rebuilding to another. The VM started and ran fine on the new parent system, but after 30 minutes or so, the virtual network adapter lost connection to the network and eventually was changed to a status of Disabled in Device Manager. Uninstalling and re-installing the adapter did not resolve the problem.

I eventually checked the version of the driver for the virtual network adapter and it displayed a strange version of 21.x.x.x. (I don’t recall the exact version), which is not at all close to what it should be. Since this driver is provided by the Integration Services, I uninstalled them from the VM, restarted it, and then installed them again. This resolved the problem. The network driver version is now 6.0.6001.18010, which is the current version.

The version of Integration Services is closely tied to the version of Hyper-V that is installed. Other issues may occur if these are mismatched, the issue with the network adapter was the first one I experienced. If you move VMs from a parent that is running the beta or RC version of Hyper-V, remember to uninstall the Integration Services (listed as Hyper-V Guest Components in Add or Remove Programs), restart the VM, and then install the version from the new parent.

Author:  Kevin McNiel
Senior Support Engineer
Microsoft Corporation