Top Issues for Microsoft Support for Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V (Q4)

It is time for the final installment of a year-long segment on the top issues in Hyper-V. It is appropriate since Windows Server 2008 R2 has finally released, and we can look forward to tracking\reporting any issues we may find in the new version of Hyper-V. As always, 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 Q4 have not changed much from Q1\Q2\Q3. Hopefully, the more people read our updates, the fewer occurrences we will see for some of these and eventually they will disappear altogether (if you have been following this blog series, you will notice some already have). Additionally, we continue to highly recommend 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

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 needs to be physically shutdown in order for the new BIOS settings to take effect.

Issue #2

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 #3

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.

Virtual Devices or 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

Corrupted virtual hard disk (VHD) file.

Cause: The most common cause was a power outage or the server wasn’t shutdown properly.

Resolution: Restore the VHD file from backup.

Issue #3

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 (driver issue - Storvsp.sys).

Resolution: Perform the steps documented in KB969266.

Issue #4

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 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 #2

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:

clip_image002

Resolution: Restore data from backup.

Issue #3

Snapshots fail to merge with error 0x80070070

Cause: Low disk space.

Resolution: Free disk space to allow the merge to complete or move the .VHD and .AVHD file(s) to a volume with sufficient disk space and manually merge the snapshots.

Integration Components

Issue #1

On Windows Server 2008, when you attempt to install the Integration Components in a Hyper-V virtual machine running Windows Vista Service Pack 2, the installation may fail with the following error:

An error has occurred: One of the update processes returned error code 1.

Cause: This issue occurs if the management operating system (parent partition) that has the Hyper-V role installed does not have Service Pack 2 installed. If you have a virtual machine that’s running Windows Vista Service Pack 2, you need to use the Vmguest.iso from Service Pack 2 to install the Integration Components.

Resolution: Perform the steps documented in KB974503.

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

Customer has multiple Hyper-V servers and virtual machines are getting duplicate MAC addresses.

Resolution: Configure the Hyper-V servers to use unique MAC address ranges by modifying the MinimumMacAddress and MaximumMacAddress registry values on each Hyper-V server. This issue is documented on TechNet: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd582198(WS.10).aspx. On Server 2008 R2, the MAC address ranges can be configured in the UI.

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

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: We have a KB article (KB 2000016) which discusses this issue for Windows 2008. On Windows 2008 R2, the experience has improved. If the virtual machine settings are modified within the Failover Cluster Management console, changes that are made to the VM will be saved to the Cluster (i.e. synchronized across all nodes in the cluster). If you make changes to the VM using the Hyper-V Manager Console, you must select the refresh virtual machine configuration option before the VM is moved to another node. This issue is documented in the Windows Server 2008 R2 help file. There is also a blog that discusses this.

Issue #2

How to configure Hyper-V on a Failover Cluster.

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

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 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

After the customer configured a virtual machine to use a VLAN ID, the virtual machine is unable to access the network.

Cause: The VLAN ID used by the virtual machine didn’t match the VLAD ID configured on the network switch.

Resolution: How to configure a virtual machine to use a VLAN is covered in the Hyper-V Planning and Deployment guide.

Issue #3

How to configure a virtual machine to use a VLAN.

Resolution: How to configure a virtual machine to use a VLAN is covered in the Hyper-V Planning and Deployment guide.

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.

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.

BTW – Did I mention we are strongly recommending installing Windows Server 2008 SP2 on all Hyper-V server? Have a good one!

Chuck Timon
Senior Support Escalation Engineer
Microsoft Enterprise Platforms Support