Top Issues for Microsoft Support for Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V (Q3)

It is time to update everyone on the issues our support engineers have been seeing for Hyper-V for the past quarter. The issues are categorized below with the top issue(s) in each category listed with possible resolutions and additional comments as needed. I think you will notice that the issues for Q3 have not changed much from Q1\Q2. Hopefully, the more people read our updates, the fewer occurrences we will see for some of these and eventually they will disappear altogether. There will probably be one more blog for the Q4 results. Additionally, I would like to mention that we are highly recommending the installation of Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2 on all servers running the Hyper-V Role.

Deployment\Planning

Issue #1

Customers looking for Hyper-V documentation.

Resolution: Information is provided on the Hyper-V TechNet Library which includes links to several Product Team blogs. Additionally, the Microsoft Virtualization site contains information that can be used to get a Hyper-V based solution up and running quickly.

Installation Issues

Issue #1

A customer was experiencing an issue on a pre-release version of Hyper-V.

Resolution: Upgrade to the release version (KB950050) of Hyper-V.

Issue #2

After the latest updates off Windows Update are installed or KB950050 is installed, virtual machines fail to start with one of the following error messages:

An error occurred while attempting to chance the state of the virtual machine vmname .
vmname ’ failed to initialize.
Failed to read or update VM configuration.

or

An error occurred while attempting to change the state of virtual machine vmname .
" VMName " failed to initialize
An attempt to read or update the virtual machine configuration failed.
" VMName " failed to read or update the virtual machine configuration: Unspecified error (0x80040005).

Cause: This issue occurs because virtual machine configurations that were created in the beta version of the Hyper-V are incompatible with later versions of the Hyper-V.

Resolution: Perform the steps documented in KB949222.

Issue #3

After the Hyper-V role is installed, a customer creates a virtual machine but it fails to start with the following error:

The virtual machine could not be started because the hypervisor is not running

Cause: Hardware virtualization or DEP was disabled in the BIOS.

Resolution: Enable Hardware virtualization or DEP in the BIOS. In some cases, the server may need to be physically shutdown in order for the new BIOS settings to take effect.

Virtual Devices\Drivers

Issue #1

Synthetic NIC was listed as an unknown device in device manager.

Cause: Integration Components needed to be installed.

Resolution: Install Integration Components (IC) package in the VM.

Issue #2

Stop 0x00000050 on a Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 or Server 2008 system with the Hyper-V role installed.

Cause: This issue can occur if a Hyper-V virtual machine is configured with a SCSI controller but no disks are attached.

Resolution: Perform the steps documented in KB969266.

Issue #3

Stop 0x0000001A on a Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 or Server 2008 system with the Hyper-V role installed.

Cause: Vid.sys

Resolution: Install hotfix KB957967 to address this issue.

Snapshots

Issue #1

Snapshots fail to merge with error 0x80070070

Cause: Low disk space.

Resolution: Free up disk space to allow the merge to complete.

Issue #2

Snapshots were deleted

Cause: The most common cause is that a customer deleted the .avhd files to reclaim disk space (not realizing that the .avhd files were the snapshots).

Resolution: Restore data from backup.

For more information on Snapshots, please refer to the Snapshot FAQ: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd560637.aspx.

Issue #3

Snapshots were lost

Cause: Parent VHD was expanded (not supported). If snapshots are associated with a virtual hard disk, the parent vhd file should never be expanded. This is documented in the Edit Disk wizard:

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Resolution: Restore data from backup.

Integration Components

Issue #1

A Windows 2000 (SP4) virtual machine with the Integration Components installed may shut down slowly.

Cause: This problem is caused by a bug in the Windows Software Trace Pre-Processor (WPP) tracing macro (outside of Hyper-V).

Resolution: KB959781 documents the workarounds for this issue on Server 2008.

Issue #2

Attempting to install the Integration Components on a Server 2003 virtual machine fails with the following error:

Unsupported Guest OS

An error has occurred: The specified program requires a newer version of Windows.

Cause: Service Pack 2 for Server 2003 wasn’t installed in the virtual machine.

Resolution: Install SP2 in the Server 2003 VM before installing the integration components.

Virtual machine State and Settings

Issue #1

You may experience one of the following issues on a Windows Server 2008 system with the Hyper-V role installed or Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008:

When you attempt to create or start a virtual machine, you receive one of the following errors:

· The requested operation cannot be performed on a file with a user-mapped section open. ( 0x800704C8 )

· ‘VMName’ Microsoft Synthetic Ethernet Port (Instance ID

{7E0DA81A-A7B4-4DFD-869F-37002C36D816}): Failed to Power On with Error 'The specified network resource or device is no longer available.' (0x80070037).

· The I/O operation has been aborted because of either a thread exit or an application request. (0x800703E3)

Virtual machines disappear from the Hyper-V Management Console.

Cause: This issue can be caused by antivirus software that is installed in the parent partition and the real-time scanning component is configured to monitor the Hyper-V virtual machine files.

Resolution: Perform the steps documented in KB961804.

Issue #2

Creating or starting a virtual machine fails with the following error:

'General access denied error' (0x80070005).

Cause: This issue can be caused by the Intel IPMI driver.

Resolution: Perform the steps documented in KB969556.

Issue #3

Virtual machines have a state of "Paused-Critical"

Cause: Lack of free disk space on the volume hosting the .vhd or .avhd files.

Resolution: Free up disk space on the volume hosting the .vhd or .avhd files.

High Availability (Failover Clustering)

Issue #1

How to configure Hyper-V on a Failover Cluster.

Resolution: A step-by-step guide is now available which covers how to configure Hyper-V on a Failover Cluster.

Issue #2

Virtual machine settings that are changed on one node in a Failover Cluster are not present when the VM is moved to another node in the cluster.

Cause: The "Refresh virtual machine configuration" option was not used before attempting a failover.

Resolution: When virtual machine settings are changed on a VM that’s on a Failover Cluster, you must select the ‘Refresh virtual machine configuration’ option before the VM is moved to another node. There is a blog that discusses this.

Backup (Hyper-V VSS Writer)

Issue #1

You may experience one of the following symptoms if you try to backup a Hyper-V virtual machine:

· If you back up a Hyper-V virtual machine that has multiple volumes, the backup may fail. If you check the VMMS event log after the backup failure occurs, the following event is logged:

Log Name: Microsoft-Windows-Hyper-V-VMMS-Admin

Source: Microsoft-Windows-Hyper-V-VMMS

Event ID: 10104

Level: Error

Description:

Failed to revert to VSS snapshot on one or more virtual hard disks of the virtual machine '%1'. (Virtual machine ID %2)

· The Microsoft Hyper-V VSS Writer may enter an unstable state if a backup of the Hyper-V virtual machine fails. If you run the vssadmin list writers command, the Microsoft Hyper-V VSS Writer is not listed. To return the Microsoft Hyper-V VSS Writer to a stable state, the Hyper-V Virtual Machine Management service must be restarted.

Resolution: An update (KB959962) is now available to address issues with backing up and restoring Hyper-V virtual machines.

Issue #2

How to backup virtual machines using Windows Server Backup

Resolution: Perform the steps documented in KB958662.

Virtual Network Manager

Issue #1

Virtual machines are unable to access the external network.

Cause: The virtual network was configured to use the wrong physical NIC.

Resolution: Configure the external network to use the correct NIC.

Issue #2

Network connectivity issues

Cause: NIC teaming software

Resolution: Remove the NIC teaming software. Our support policy for NIC Teaming with Hyper-V is now documented in KB968703.

Issue #3

Customers inquiring if Hyper-V supports NIC Teaming.

Resolution: Our support policy for NIC Teaming with Hyper-V is now documented in KB968703.

Hyper-V Management Console

Issue #1

How to manage Hyper-V remotely.

Resolution: The steps to configure remote administration of Hyper-V are covered in a TechNet article. John Howard also has a very thorough blog on remote administration.

Import/Export

Issue #1

Importing a virtual machine may fail with the following error:

A Server error occurred while attempting to import the virtual machine. Failed to import the virtual machine from import directory <Directory Path>. Error: One or more arguments are invalid (0x80070057).

Resolution: Perform the steps documented in KB968968.

Miscellaneous

Issue #1

You may experience one of the following issues on a Windows Server 2003 virtual machine:

· An Event ID 1054 is logged to the Application Event log:

Event ID: 1054
Source: Userenv
Type: Error
Description:
Windows cannot obtain the domain controller name for your computer network. (The specified domain either does not exist or could not be contacted). Group Policy processing aborted.

· A negative ping time is displayed when you use the pingcommand.

· Perfmon shows high disk queue lengths

Cause: This problem occurs when the time-stamp counters (TSC) for different processor cores are not synchronized.

Resolution: Perform the steps documented in KB938448.

As always, we hope this has been informative for you.

Chuck Timon
Senior Support Escalation Engineer
Microsoft Enterprise Platforms Support