Can’t Ping Server after Changing Router

Mark Berry November 12, 2011

After installing a new router, I was no longer able to ping my Hyper-V server. Why not? The router sits at the edge of the network—how could it affect pinging on the local LAN?

Hyper-V Certificate Will Expire within 30 Days

Mark Berry June 18, 2011

It may be a bit sensationalistic to call it a time bomb, but apparently Hyper-V will only run for a year before the self-signed certificate that allows remote access to the machines expires. Supposedly it will auto-renew (unless you’re on Server 2008 and need this hotfix), but according to MSKB 241735, you may still be left with an inoperable mouse and need to save/resume your VMs.

Restore a Hyper-V Server to an Optiplex 960

Mark Berry January 7, 2011

Recently I upgraded a small server to run Windows Server 2008 R2 as a Hyper-V host, with Server 2008 R2 as a guest as well. I’ve read that Windows Server Backup can restore to dissimilar hardware. That could be especially helpful in a small environment where no other servers are available. Can I restore the entire Server 2008 host and guest to an Optiplex 960 desktop? How long will it take?

Hyper-V Virtual Machine Failed to Start after Copying VHD

Mark Berry October 8, 2010

On Windows Server 2008 R2 running Hyper-V, I copied a VHD to an external drive using Windows Explorer. After compacting the drive, I copied the VHD back to its original location and tried to start the virtual machine. I got a long message telling me that the virtual machine failed to start due to an access denied error.

Hyper-V Failed to Compact VHD

Mark Berry October 8, 2010

On Windows Server 2008 R2 running Hyper-V, I’m trying to compact a (dynamically expanding) VHD on an external hard drive (USB drive, NTFS format). The drive is 59GB and there is 103GB free on the drive. I keep getting the message, "The system failed to compact <MyDrive>.VHD. Error code:  The requested operation could not be completed due to a file system limitation." Why can’t I compress the VHD?

A Required CD/DVD Drive Device Driver is Missing

Mark Berry September 23, 2010

I downloaded a Windows Server 2008 R2 ISO from Microsoft licensing. I inserted the ISO into a a Hyper-V virtual machine and started the installation. Very soon this message appeared in a window:

“A required CD/DVD drive device driver is missing. If you have a driver floppy disk, CD, DVD, or USB flash drive, please insert it now.”

W32Time Errors in a Hyper-V Virtual Environment

Mark Berry August 27, 2010

I am running Small Business Server 2008 SP2 under Hyper-V. On a Server 2003 member server, also running under Hyper-V, I was getting frequent W32Time warnings errors in the System event log (Event IDs 38, 24, and 29 in that order).

ShadowProtect Fails Reading Hyper-V Pass-Through Disk

Mark Berry July 8, 2010

I decided to use ShadowProtect to do a physical-to-virtual (P2V) move of an SBS 2003 machine. I booted the SBS 2003 machine from a ShadowProtect 3.5 CD and created offline images of the SBS 2003 partitions. I stored the ShadowProtect images on a simple USB drive formatted with NTFS and a 16KB cluster size. I used the default compression and did not encrypt the backup.

Next I moved the USB drive to a machine running Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V. In Disk Management, I set the drive Offline, then in Hyper-V Manager I attached the drive to a virtual machine as a pass-through disk. Finally I booted the Hyper-V virtual machine from a ShadowProtect 3.5.2 ISO file.