Win 8.1 Pro, Hyper-V v6.3.9600.16384

I have set a VM for "Always start this virtual machine automatically".  But when Windows and Hyper-V start up, this machine is not starting.  I have alternately tried going back to a different setting for startup and coming back to auto start thinking it might reset some internal 'switch', and I have tried 0 and 30 sec delays wondering if there are delayed services, but I don't know what those might be.  But I would think when Hyper-V starts, it should be fully ready to go.

I have Hyper-V also running on another machine (Server 2012 R2) and it behaves properly.  Of course the only time I shut down the server is for software updates as required, but when I do that, Hyper-V automatically starts all its VMs per the settings.

What things can I look at to determine why Hyper-V is not starting the VM automatically on this Win 8.1 machine, and what might I do to fix this problem?

Thanks.

Is it simply not starting or are you getting an error during the startup?  Have you reviewed the event logs to see if something is preventing it from starting?

I know I have some of test VMs on a removable USB drive.  I will often see a 'stopped - critical' error on the VMs after a restart of the system because the drive is not yet recognized so Hyper-V can't find the machines.  Waiting until the whole system is up allows me to start the VMs.  Since these are test VMs, though, I have never had them set for auto-start, so I can't say if that is a problem.

Hi Alan and Tim,

actually what Tim wrote regarding the USB Drive could cause the issue.
You can check this post https://jensit.wordpress.com/2013/07/18/client-hyper-v-offcritical/ in order to resolve the issue - also for you Tim ;-)

If that is not the cause, please have a look if there is something in the Hyper-V Event Logs and let us know.

Best Regards,
Jens

Hi Tim and Jens,

Thanks for both your responses.  The link regarding unavailable VM's at startup was interesting.  I don't think that's directly my problem, but I will try an extended startup delay in little bit. 

My machine has 2 SSD's for basic operation.  I boot from the 1st SSD, and my VMs/VHDs are on the 2nd SSD.  There is also a 3rd spindle drive, but that's not in the Hyper-V equation.

I also checked services and noticed there are 7 Hyper-V services that are all set to Manual(Trigger Start).  I assume that's OK.

Good reminder to check the Event Viewer and I did check for all the Hyper-V sources.  I had one Critical warning; the .iso I had specified for the virtual DVD was no longer in the location that Hyper-V was looking for it.  I changed the DVD to 'none'.  However, that didn't seem to make a difference.  But the following is curious and the plot thickens...

If I boot from power off, the VM doesn't start.  If I boot from restart, the VM does start.  However, I don't know what that implies.

Any ideas what is different about a power up versus a restart that might affect Hyper-V?

• Edited by Alan Wheeler Thursday, July 30, 2015 4:34 PM

I don't know about Client Hyper-V, but Hyper-V Server will eventually turn on a virtual machine even if its storage isn't available right away. I haven't seen this behavior documented anywhere, but I've seen it occur reliably going all the way back to 2008 R2. It may take some time for VMMS to "catch on" that the storage is available and then respond accordingly, but I've never seen a VM just stay off.

I wonder though, if your issue isn't related to memory starvation. The behavior you describe is more inline with what I would expect from Hyper-V Server and not Client Hyper-V and I would think that VMMS would eventually "catch on" there as well, but it's worth looking at.

Hi Eric,

Thanks for the thought.  I have 32 gig on this machine, so I would think there's plenty of room for Hyper-V to work.  On the other hand, because the boot drive is a SSD, maybe things are going by so fast that setups aren't complete before Hyper-V is waking up.  I never really thought that any of the memory resources wouldn't be immediately available, but I suppose that's possible.  I will continue to look into this odd startup behavior (restart vs cold boot) and also look at putting hyper-V on a delayed start.

So the delayed start didn't solve the problem, but I did notice before I could actually get into the services applet after boot up Hyper-V was already on.  That's pretty quick.  I thought delayed start was supposed to wait for about 120 secs.

Anyway, I did observe this:

If I stop the VMMS service and restart, the VM starts up immediately.

So I'm thinking delayed start is needed, but I don't seem to be able to get enough of a delay.  Or maybe it's something else.

Any thoughts?

Hi Alan Wheeler,

When the [Automatic Start Action] is set to 0 or near lower value to all VMs , the VMs cannot start

Because they need more time to connect to their iSCSI disks. But when we set the VM's to greater value they all start is the expect behavior, please check the event log to confirm whether have any event occur after you cold start computer.

The related article:

Looking at the Hyper-V Event Log

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/virtual_pc_guy/archive/2009/02/02/looking-at-the-hyper-v-event-log.aspx

Im glad to be of help to you!