OakLeaf Systems: Unable to Connect to Windows 8 Client or Server Virtualized with Windows 2008 R2 Hyper-V

Sunday, September 25, 2011

Unable to Connect to Windows 8 Client or Server Virtualized with Windows 2008 R2 Hyper-V

Update 9/25/2011 4:30 PM PDT: Posted the workaround for the connect issue in Problems Connecting to Windows 8 VMs Isn’t Related to Developer Previews; Windows 2008 R2 SP1 Is at Fault of 9/25. This post provides more details on the problem.

Update 9/25/2011 9:00 AM PDT: If you’re having problems with Windows 8 VMs with Windows Server 2008 R2 as the host OS, see An Update that enables the the Windows Developer Preview or Windows Server Developer Preview to be hosted in a Hyper-V virtual machine on Windows Server 2008 R2 (KB 2526776) of 9/14/2011:

Consider the following scenario:

You install the Hyper-V server role on a computer that is running Windows Server 2008 R2.

You create a virtual machine on the Windows Server 2008 R2-based computer that is running the Windows Developer Preview or Windows Server Developer Preview, codenamed "Windows 8."

In this scenario, you may experience one or more of the following issues:

The Windows Developer Preview or Windows Server Developer Preview virtual machine stops responding.

The Windows Server 2008 R2 host computer displays a stop error message and restarts automatically. This behavior brings down all other running virtual machines together with the host computer.

You must request the hotfix from Microsoft Support. It isn’t available for direct download.

The hotfix isn’t applicable in my case. I didn’t experience the issues described when I was able to connect to the VMs or later.

An MSDN subscription is required to download the en_windows_server_developer_preview_with_hyper-v_virtual_machine_x64_735222.exe (Microsoft VHD Extension Utility) file that creates 8102.0.amd64fre.winmain_win8m3.110823-1455_Server_ServerDatacenter_en-US.vhd (8.3 GB).

Clicking the MSDN Subscriber Downloads page’s Windows Server Developer Preview with Hyper-V Virtual Machine (x64) - (English) download button at 9:00 AM PDT on 9/25/2011 produced the following error:

Bad Request

Your browser sent a request that this server could not understand.

Size of a request header field exceeds server limit.

Cookie: WT_FPC=id=66.123.163.242-3586143104.30115101:lv=1316962561481:ss=1316961127906; A=I&I=AxUFAAAAAADOCAAAk+1bR0xDGXXhymCBxt2MsQ!!&M=1&CS=127P_h002g1G80002j1G80F0021G800; omniID=ccf14e40_a025_4452_87d1_ff92169039cb; MSID=Microsoft.CreationDate=08/09/2011 14:45:24&Microsoft.LastVisitDate=09/25/2011 15:56:02&Microsoft.VisitStartDate=09/25/2011 …

followed by another 7,794 characters. If the status changes, I’ll update this post.

Update 9/24/2011 8:00 AM PDT: Concluded that the Windows Update to Windows Server 2008 R2 of 9/21 or 9/22/2011 caused the problem and added conventional installation info (see end of post.)

I spent most of 9/22/2011, creating virtual machines with the Windows 8 Server Developer Preview VHD and the Windows 8 (Client) Developer Preview ISO disk on my 64-bit development machine running Windows 2008 Server R2 Enterprise Edition with Hyper-V.

I added both VMs to my oakleaf.org domain, which uses a Windows 2003 Server R2 SP2 machine domain controller. I had no problem on 9/22 connecting to either VHD.

Windows Update applied some updates to the host OS during the night and rebooted the system. This update made 16 changes to my Windows 8 (Client) Developer Preview installation (not virtual). When I attempted to connect to both VMs on Thursday morning, I received the following message:

OL-VIRTSERVER5.oakleaf.org is the name of the host OS and I logged on to it successfully with my OAKLEAF\Administrator account immediately before attempting to connect. I was attempting to connect to OL-WIN8VIRTSERVER (named ‘Windows 8 Server Developer Preview’).

My assumption was that I needed to log in with my Live ID account name and password, but clicking the Use Another Account button only enabled me to use another account in the oakleaf.org domain:

Entering my Live ID email alias and password produced the following response:

Clearing the Use Default Credentials Automatically (No Prompt) check box didn’t solve the problem.

Instead, I received the following message:

And this response when I clicked the Connect button:

I deleted and recreated the VM following the exact procedure I used yesterday and encountered an identical problem when attempting to reconnect. I believe the updates made to the host OS might have altered Hyper-V’s operation.

Update 9/24/2011 8:00 AM PDT: Split an existing primary partition on the development machine, installed Windows 8 Server Developer Preview to a 122 GB logical drive, and logged is a default local Administrator. Will add some user accounts and report additional details after joining the domain tomorrow.