I can't delete a VM that is part of the subscription that I am an owner of.

Question

I can't delete a VM that is part of the subscription that I am an owner of.

pkrane 0

Attempting to delete the VM from the Azure Portal receives the follow error:

Resource/subscriptions/<my subscription>/resourcegroups/<my resource group>/providers/Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachines/my virtual machine>
Operation name: Delete Virtual Machine
Time stamp: Wed May 27 2026 16:58:55 GMT-0400 (Eastern Daylight Time)
Event initiated by: <my admin id>
Error code: ResourceOperationFailure
Message: The resource operation completed with terminal provisioning state 'Failed'.

I have manually deleted the attached disk successfully. It doesn't show up anymore.

I have tried a dozen times to delete the network interface. Azure still shows the network interface. Each attempt to detach the interface - I am met with "No network interfaces available to detach". That network interface is not attached to any other resource.

Every attempt to redeploy the VM fails.

I check for resource locks. The response: "This resource has no locks."

I can attempt to update the VM - "Operation 'Update VM' is not allowed on VM '<my VM>' since the VM is marked for deletion. You can only retry the Delete operation (or wait for an ongoing one to complete)."

When I retry the deletion, without trying to delete any attached resources. The activity log shows that the Deletion has been started but ultimately fails with the first message of this issue - "The resource operation completed with terminal provisioning state 'Failed'."

CoPilot does not seem to help. All suggested CLI commands either fail or look like they are successful but, in the end, I end up with all of the same errors above.

Is there something obvious that I doing wrong?

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3 answers

Your answer

Answer 1

pkrane 0

Accepted. There was Page Blob attached to the resource. I deleted it and am trying the delete again.

pkrane 0 Reputation points

2026-05-28T20:12:44.9666667+00:00

delete failed. See other comments.

Answer 2

Himanshu Shekhar 6,700 Microsoft External Staff Moderator

Hey there! It looks like your VM is stuck in a “Failed” delete state because Azure still thinks there’s a network interface (NIC) attached—even though you don’t see one in the portal. When a resource’s provisioningState is stuck, the portal UI sometimes hides it, but you can still force-delete via CLI/PowerShell or the REST API.

Here’s what you can try:

Confirm the NIC really exists (and see its provisioning state)

Azure CLI


     az network nic list \

       --resource-group <your-RG> \

       --query "[].{Name:name, Id:id, State:provisioningState}" \

       -o table

PowerShell


     Get-AzNetworkInterface -ResourceGroupName <your-RG> |

       Select-Object Name, Id, ProvisioningState

Force-delete the orphaned NIC

Azure CLI


     az network nic delete --ids <NIC-Id> --no-wait

PowerShell


     Get-AzNetworkInterface -ResourceGroupName <your-RG> -Name <nicName> |

       Remove-AzNetworkInterface -Force

Delete the VM resource itself

Azure CLI


     az vm delete \

       --resource-group <your-RG> \

       --name <yourVM> \

       --yes \

       --no-wait

Or via the generic resource delete (this ignores dependencies)


     az resource delete \

       --ids /subscriptions/<subId>/resourceGroups/<your-RG>/providers/Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachines/<yourVM>

(Optional) If your VM is the only resource in that resource group, you can drop the entire group in one go:
```
   az group delete -n <your-RG> --yes --no-wait
```
Use Resource Explorer / REST API if CLI/PowerShell still fails
- Head to https://resources.azure.com
- Navigate to your subscription → resourceGroups → … → virtualMachines → <yourVM>
- Click “DELETE” in the JSON pane to force the delete

If after all this the VM/NIC are still stuck, you’ll need to open an Azure Support ticket so the backend engineers can clear the stale resource state.

Hope that helps! Let me know how it goes.

References

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pkrane 0 Reputation points

2026-05-28T07:46:23.48+00:00

When I attempt to dissociate the nic, I am met with "No network interfaces available to detach".
pkrane 0 Reputation points

2026-05-28T07:57:34.1+00:00

Everything seems to point to being able to delete the VM first then the nic will deleteable - I will wait to see if deletes. It is late - I will check back in a few hours.

Thank you for your help.
pkrane 0 Reputation points

2026-05-28T19:20:55.81+00:00

All attempts to delete the VM have failed showing errors about a dependent network resource. I was able to delete more dependent resources like unmanaged disks as mentioned above, but the Nic continues to show that it exists. All attempts to delete the nic fail.

Using the CLI I either get the following:
StatusCode: 400

ReasonPhrase: Bad Request

ErrorCode: NicInUse

or

It show as successful - see below.

PS C:\Windows\System32> $machineName = 'ipa'

$resGroupName = '<my Resource Group name>'

$machine = Get-AzVM -Name $machineName -ResourceGroupName $resGroupName

$machine | Remove-AzNetworkInterface -Force

PS C:\Windows\System32>

If I use Azure Portal in an attempt to detach it, it displays:

No idea what next - except attempt to open a support ticket. Haven't done that before, but I will learn
Himanshu Shekhar 6,700 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2026-06-03T06:06:11.5233333+00:00

At this stage, the behavior strongly indicates a stale backend reference/orphaned compute dependency rather than a customer-side configuration issue. Since:

VM is already marked for deletion

NIC cannot be detached (No network interfaces available to detach)

NIC delete returns NicInUse

OS disk/page blobs were already cleaned up

Portal + PowerShell + CLI all fail consistently

the recommended next steps would be:

Validate whether the VM still has hidden NIC references

Get-AzVM -ResourceGroupName <RG> -Name <VMName> -Status | ConvertTo-Json -Depth 10

and

(Get-AzVM -ResourceGroupName <RG> -Name <VMName>).NetworkProfile

Try a force delete using the REST/Resource Explorer path, as portal operations may be replaying a failed cached state:

https://resources.azure.com/
pkrane 0 Reputation points

2026-06-03T15:23:34.8033333+00:00

Added results of two Get-AzVM commands to private messages. Didn't notice anything out of the ordinary other than the Statuses section shows the following using the first command.
{
"Code": "ProvisioningState/failed/NetworkingInternalOperationError",
"Level": "Error",
"Display Status": "Provisioning failed",
"Message": "An unexpected error occurred while processing the network profile of the VM. Please retry later.",
"Time": "2026-05-28T16:30:19.6020804Z"
}

and for the second command, it still shows the "undetachable" network interface.
Himanshu Shekhar 6,700 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2026-06-16T00:58:07.6366667+00:00

pkrane - The issue was caused by a reference to a decommissioned cluster (bl***20) in useast, which had already been retired in March 2026, resulting in VIPManager connection failures and inability to release associated VIPs due to unreachable fabric endpoints.

This led to errors such as resource not found and endpoint resolution failures. As part of mitigation under the impacted service references were cleaned up and deleted, resolving the connectivity issue. The mitigation is now completed, and services have stabilized
Himanshu Shekhar 6,700 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2026-06-17T05:04:29.26+00:00

pkrane - Just checking if provided response was helpful! please let me know if you have any queries.

Answer 3

Use a dependency‑first cleanup approach and then retry the VM delete, focusing on the NIC and any remaining dependent resources.

Verify and remove all VM dependencies
- In the Azure portal, open the VM blade and note:
  - Resource group
  - Network interface(s)
  - OS/data disks
  - Any boot diagnostics storage account/container
- Since the OS disk is already deleted, manually remove remaining dependencies in the same resource group:
  - Network interface
  - Any remaining data disks
  - Boot diagnostics storage container (if present)
If the resource group itself can be deleted, that is the simplest way to remove a VM and all dependencies together. If the resource group cannot be deleted (because it contains other resources that must be kept), continue with the manual steps.

Force‑remove the NIC via PowerShell (Azure Stack Hub pattern)

Connect a PowerShell session to the environment and retrieve the VM object, then pipe it to remove the NIC and VM, following the Azure Stack Hub pattern:

   $machineName = 'VM_TO_DELETE'
   $resGroupName = 'RESOURCE_GROUP'
   $machine = Get-AzVM -Name $machineName -ResourceGroupName $resGroupName
   
   # Remove the virtual network interface
   $machine | Remove-AzNetworkInterface -Force
   
   # Finally, delete the VM
   $machine | Remove-AzVM -Force

For environments using AzureRM modules instead of Az modules, the equivalent cmdlet is:

   $machine = Get-AzureRmVM -Name $machineName -ResourceGroupName $resGroupName
   $machine | Remove-AzureRmNetworkInterface -Force
   $machine | Remove-AzureRmVM -Force

This pattern removes the NIC directly from the VM object, which can clear stale associations that block deletion in the portal.

Confirm storage leases are not blocking deletion
- If the VM used unmanaged disks (page blobs), verify that no leased page blobs remain attached to a VM:
  1. In the Azure portal, go to the storage account → Blob service → Containers.
  2. Open each container and look for blobs with Blob Type = Page blob and Lease State = Leased.
  3. For each such blob, open Edit Metadata and check MicrosoftAzureCompute_VMName and MicrosoftAzureCompute_DiskType to identify the VM and whether it is an OSDisk or DataDisk.
  4. If the disk type is OSDisk, ensure the VM is deleted (Step 2 above). If it is DataDisk, detach it from the VM and then delete the disk.
  5. If MicrosoftAzureCompute_VMName and MicrosoftAzureCompute_DiskType are missing, the blob is explicitly leased but not attached to a VM. Break the lease by selecting Break lease, then delete the blob.
- After deleting the VM, verify that any VHD blobs used by the VM show Lease Status = Available in the blob properties.
If the VM still cannot be deleted
- Ensure no virtual network or subnet dependencies are blocking cleanup (for example, NICs, private endpoints, or service association links on the subnet). Use diagnostic commands (Azure CLI) to list subnet dependencies and remove any remaining IP configurations or links before retrying deletion.
- Once all dependent resources (NICs, disks, diagnostic containers, subnet associations) are removed, retry the VM delete operation from the portal or via PowerShell.

This sequence aligns with the documented approach for removing VMs that are stuck because of dependent resources, especially unmanaged disks and NICs.

References:

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I can't delete a VM that is part of the subscription that I am an owner of.

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