Hyper-V - 'Failed to start the virtual machine 'test' because one of the Hyper-V components is not running.'

Question

_{Tuesday, August 20, 2013 1:37 PM | 2 votes}

Hi all,

Having a bit of a nightmare with Hyper-V on my Windows 8 Pro laptop - Whenever I create a new VM and try to start it I receive the following error;

'Failed to start the virtual machine 'test' because one of the Hyper-V components is not running.'

I sometimes also receive an error saying something along the lines of 'Unable to change virtual machine state'

I have done a lot of searching a seen two common answers - The first is to try removing the Hyper-V role and re-adding it - I have tried this several times to no avail. (Intel VT and all virtualisation capabilities are enabled in BIOS). The second issue it would seem some people have had relates to editing the VMX configuration file and adding the line hypervisor.cpuid.v0 = "FALSE" - I thought VMX files were only present in VMware Virtual Machines...

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks in advance.

James

All replies (30)

_{Monday, October 28, 2013 11:18 AM ✅Answered}

I solved my issue by uninstalling my Safend policy. Only uninstalling worked not just deactivation or turning off the policy.

_{Tuesday, August 20, 2013 2:50 PM}

you are right.  VMX files are only present with VMware virtual machines.

Does this: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2761004

apply to your situation?

or; http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windows/en-US/223443d6-659a-4e24-8a23-4cb11f0c3156/windows-8-hyperv-virtual-machine-management-service-failed-to-start-the-virtual-machine

Brian Ehlert
http://ITProctology.blogspot.com
Learn. Apply. Repeat.
Disclaimer: Attempting change is of your own free will.

_{Tuesday, August 20, 2013 3:11 PM}

Hi Brian,

The first one does look like it could be the one... The second link I'd already seen and it isn't that, all devices are fully installed, thanks all the same.

In reading the KB article from the firs link the 'Workaround' is listed as; 'To work around this issue, disable the I/O verification option in Driver Verifier for all drivers on the host computer.' That's as much depth as the article goes into and I'm afraid I'm not sure how to do this... I was wondering if this is something you've done before?

Many thanks,

James

_{Tuesday, August 20, 2013 3:41 PM}

I have never had to mess with it.

But these two articles seem to put the pieces together:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/ff545448(v=vs.85).aspx

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/244617/en-us

It definitely is a strange thing.

Brian Ehlert
http://ITProctology.blogspot.com
Learn. Apply. Repeat.
Disclaimer: Attempting change is of your own free will.

_{Tuesday, August 20, 2013 4:07 PM}

Hi Brain, thanks for the swift reply.

I've looked at my Driver Verifier Manager and they are all set to disabled...

So it is perhaps not this issue after all... :(

Any further ideas per chance?!

James

_{Tuesday, August 20, 2013 5:25 PM}

Can you please check the following:

1. Please check the System event log for events logged with a source of “Hyper-V-Hypervisor” – there should be an event indicating that “Hypervisor successfully started.”
2. Please check the Hyper-V event logs (Applications and Services Logs -> Microsoft -> Windows -> Hyper-V-*) specifically check the VMMS and Hypervisor logs for errors.
3. Please check if the following services are running: VID and VMBUS.  You can check them by running the following commands from an elevated command prompt.
   sc queryex vid
   sc queryex vmbus

-Taylor BrownProgram Manager, Hyper-V

-Taylor Brown<br/> -Program Manager, Hyper-V<br/> -http://blogs.msdn.com/taylorb

_{Wednesday, August 21, 2013 9:11 AM}

Hi Taylor,

1.) System event log shows 'Hypervisor successfully started', but bizarrely the last event is yesterday... Though today I have opened Hyper-V and tried again to launch a VM so not sure if I should be seeing an event for today or not...

2.) In the Hyper-V-VMMS logs I consistently receive two errors;

Event 15130 - 'test' failed to start. (Virtual machine ID 966102ED-7BD1-4FBB-8E5B-5FAE6ED96B84)

AND

Event 20144 - The Virtual Machine Management Service failed to start the virtual machine 'test' because one of the Hyper-V components is not running (Virtual machine ID 966102ED-7BD1-4FBB-8E5B-5FAE6ED96B84).

3.) 'vid' service is running, 'vmbus' is not however...

I hope this helps!

Many thanks,

James

_{Wednesday, August 21, 2013 4:11 PM}

The hypervisor event log message is generated only at boot - so this would be expected.  Also vmbus should not be running on the host (I was looking at a VM yesterday)...  This error message is generated only when the vid is determined not to be running or cannot communicate with the hypervisor.

I have seen this due to anti-virus software in the past or due to driver verifier being configured.  Since it looks like you checked driver verifier already do you have anti-virus software installed?  If so have you followed the best practices and exempted the Hyper-v services? 

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd283088(WS.10).aspx

To resolve this problem, configure the real-time scanning component within your antivirus software to exclude the following directories and files:

• Default virtual machine configuration directory (C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Hyper-V)
• Custom virtual machine configuration directories
• Default virtual hard disk drive directory (C:\Users\Public\Documents\Hyper-V\Virtual Hard Disks)
• Custom virtual hard disk drive directories
• Custom replication data directories, if you are using Hyper-V Replica
• Snapshot directories
• Vmms.exe (Note: This file may have to be configured as a process exclusion within the antivirus software.)
• Vmwp.exe (Note: This file may have to be configured as a process exclusion within the antivirus software.)

-Taylor Brown<br/> -Program Manager, Hyper-V<br/> -http://blogs.msdn.com/taylorb

_{Thursday, August 22, 2013 9:33 AM}

Hi Taylor,

I had read that it could be antivirus related so had already added exclusions to the directories but not for the services - I have now done this and I still get exactly the same error unfortunately...

Any other suggestions...?!

Many thanks,

James

_{Thursday, August 22, 2013 6:32 PM}

A couple of other possible culprits/questions:

• Can you check your BIOS settings and make sure that:  Virtualization / VT-x  is enabled,  start.
• Has this computer ever started VMs?
• What processor is in this machine?  For client Hyper-V we require the machine support SLAT (EPT/NPT) most processors made in the last few years support this feature.
• Can you verify that you are not running in safe mode?

-Taylor Brown<br/> -Program Manager, Hyper-V<br/> -http://blogs.msdn.com/taylorb

_{Friday, August 23, 2013 9:07 AM | 1 vote}

Hiya Taylor, thank you for your continued help with this issue, it is appreciated.

In answer to your questions above;

• Intel Virtualization (VT-x) is definitely supported and enabled
• I installed VMware Player as a test to see if I could run VM's using that which I can, so I don't believe it is a machine issue, more a Hyper-V specific issue
• It is an Intel Core i5 3320m 2.6Ghz, which is EPT capable (Intel's version of SLAT) - I imagine that is okay?
• And no I'm definitely not running in Safe Mode!

Kind Regards,

James

_{Friday, August 23, 2013 5:41 PM}

James,

Thank you for your patience on this – you’ve got an interesting scenario…  Just to verify you don’t have VMWare player or any other virtualization software installed on this machine?

Can you also e-mail me some system information dumps (taylorb–at–microsoft.com):

1. Msinfo32 – run msinfo32.exe, then File-Save
2. Event Logs From Hyper-V components – run Event Viewer, navigate to Applications and Services Logs -> Microsoft -> Windows -> Hyper-V-*, right click on the admin logs for each and select Save All Events As…

-Taylor Brown<br/> -Program Manager, Hyper-V<br/> -http://blogs.msdn.com/taylorb

_{Friday, August 23, 2013 8:40 PM}

Hi Taylor,

Not at all, I realise it's a tricky one!

Nope, I put VMware Player on temporarily just to perform the tests but took it off again immediately and have no other hypervisor software installed. I do have Virtual Machine Manager Console installed and two VMware consoles installed but these are consoles only, so I doubt they'd be playing a part in it. (I could of course be wrong!)

I have sent you an email with the log information attached as requested.

Thank you again for your help.

James

_{Thursday, September 5, 2013 2:28 PM}

Hi Alex,

Thank you for your answer, but if you look at the thread further up you will see Brian suggested that already, and I replied including a screenshot showing all driver verification on my system is already disabled.

Thanks anyway!

James

_{Tuesday, October 22, 2013 6:52 AM}

did you find a solution ? . I am facing the same issue.

_{Tuesday, December 10, 2013 10:29 AM}

Apologies it took me a little while to reply but yes I have just found exactly the same thing, uninstalling Safend completely solves the issue. Peculiar.

_{Monday, January 6, 2014 5:06 AM}

Can anyone tell me how "uninstall my Safend policy" on Windows 8.1?

+__+

_{Monday, February 10, 2014 5:02 PM}

For me it meant fully un-installing the Safend program through Add/Remove programs.

_{Sunday, November 8, 2015 7:01 AM}

Where is the safend policy where to uninstall if can you elaborate more pls

RaSa

_{Wednesday, January 13, 2016 1:28 PM}

Hey how to uninstall safend policy?

_{Wednesday, February 10, 2016 4:31 PM}

That's BS. What a bunch of carp!

_{Saturday, January 7, 2017 12:52 PM | 1 vote}

i still dont understand why the windows team from microsoft makes windows errors more specific. if they build it correctly a log entry would be created. all windows errors are vague thats bad! just why the entry is created just give a clear path

_{Tuesday, January 17, 2017 11:46 AM | 1 vote}

That solved my problem, i'm virtualising Hyper-V 2016 servers for my lab and forgot to enable Hardware Virtualisation.  Doh!!!!!

_{Monday, May 15, 2017 7:52 PM}

That's BS. What a bunch of carp!

Those damn fish. Always screwing up my system. I think it is the water but I am not sure.

_{Monday, June 5, 2017 10:59 AM}

Nice observation.

_{Monday, June 5, 2017 11:00 AM}

It is already activated , the error still persists.

_{Thursday, December 7, 2017 11:53 AM}

Can you please add clarity in your answer?

Any provided steps will help.

Vaibhav Gawali

_{Monday, April 2, 2018 4:46 PM}

Hi guys, I am trying to get a nested virtualization: Docker for Windows (running Linux containers) in Windows Server 2016 installed into a VM created by XenServer 7.1.

I was stucked suspecting about Docker for Windows. This comment helped me to identify even most of Hyper-V services have been configured during feature installation, Hypervisor was not that good at all.

I found this log line as a system event log :

"Hypervisor launch failed; Either VMX not present or not enabled in BIOS."

Now I am investigating how the VM was created configured. I am about to check these strategies with IT team:

• http://richsitblog.com/index.php/2015/10/12/enabling-nested-virtualization-on-citrix-xenserver/
• https://justus.berlin/2015/07/nested-virtualization-in-citrix-xenserver-6-5-sp1/
• https://discussions.citrix.com/topic/379168-nested-hypervisors-in-xenserver-7/#comment-1933240

_{Friday, December 28, 2018 12:47 AM}

I have this same problem - and I think I have tried everything below here and still cannot resolve it.. this is on a vm just created fresh from Azure.  I have completely turned off the firewall and I cannot find any security or anti virus software on it..  I tried all the solutions here but still stuck 

Currently I am getting this in response to docker info

error during connect: Get http://%2F%2F.%2Fpipe%2Fdocker_engine/v1.39/info: open //./pipe/docker_engine: The system cannot find the file specified. In the default daemon configuration on Windows, the docker client must be run elevated to connect. This error may also indicate that the docker daemon is not running.

and this when I try to restart docker from the docker icon

Unable to start: The running command stopped because the preference variable "ErrorActionPreference" or common parameter is set to Stop: 'MobyLinuxVM' failed to start.

Failed to start the virtual machine 'MobyLinuxVM' because one of the Hyper-V components is not running.

'MobyLinuxVM' failed to start. (Virtual machine ID 3E01D9CE-5E4B-4F95-BFE6-5FE42FA309AC)

The Virtual Machine Management Service failed to start the virtual machine 'MobyLinuxVM' because one of the Hyper-V components is not running (Virtual machine ID 3E01D9CE-5E4B-4F95-BFE6-5FE42FA309AC).
at Start-MobyLinuxVM, <No file>: line 296
at <ScriptBlock>, <No file>: line 412
   at Docker.Core.Pipe.NamedPipeClient.Send(String action, Object[] parameters) in C:\workspaces\stable-18.09.x\src\github.com\docker\pinata\win\src\Docker.Core\pipe\NamedPipeClient.cs:line 36
   at Docker.Actions.DoStart(SynchronizationContext syncCtx, Boolean showWelcomeWindow, Boolean executeAfterStartCleanup) in C:\workspaces\stable-18.09.x\src\github.com\docker\pinata\win\src\Docker.Windows\Actions.cs:line 92
   at Docker.Actions.<>c__DisplayClass19_0.<Start>b__0() in C:\workspaces\stable-18.09.x\src\github.com\docker\pinata\win\src\Docker.Windows\Actions.cs:line 74
   at Docker.WPF.TaskQueue.<>c__DisplayClass19_0.<.ctor>b__1() in C:\workspaces\stable-18.09.x\src\github.com\docker\pinata\win\src\Docker.WPF\TaskQueue.cs:line 59

_{Friday, December 28, 2018 1:00 AM}

I do not have Safend installed -I wish that was my problem!