Windows 10 Enterprise + Hyper-V cannot connect to VM?

[BLinux]

Hi,

I have little experience with Hyper-V, so keep that in mind. A client has provided me with a nice ThinkPad P50 workstation laptop to do work for them. Unfortunately, it runs Windows 10 Enterprise but the entire project I'm working on is Linux based. I wanted to get a Linux environment running as VMs in the Windows 10 Enterprise OS; they no longer offer VMware, and I tried VirtualBox but that had issues. So, I thought I'd try Hyper-V. I turned on the service, and I can create a new Virtual switch and VM in Hyper-V manager, but when I try to connect to the VM console, it waits and waits and then says it can't connect to the VM console. I've rebooted, I've deleted and re-created the VM, but still... I can't connect to the VM console. If I understand correctly, the process is VMconnect.exe or something like that?

So, what is causing this? Is it an access control issue? Where can I look to find out more about why this problem is happening? The error message didn't have any error code I can search for. Searching for the message itself on Google landed me on a few pages where others have experienced similar problems with either no resolution or mysteriously started working.

Any help would be most appreciated by this Hyper-V newb. Thanks.

 

[Tom5051]

Not sure about Hyper-V but with VMware workstation, you have to setup a bridged connection between the hypervisor and the base Windows machine. Could be something similar?

 

[BLinux]

Not sure about Hyper-V but with VMware workstation, you have to setup a bridged connection between the hypervisor and the base Windows machine. Could be something similar?

Sorry, in case I wasn't clear, I don't mean connect to the VM over the network, I mean connected to the VM console on the host itself.

 

[marcoi]

what was your issue with virtualbox? I since moved off vmware workstation and used virtualbox for years now. Never had any issues getting various vms running. One thing to check if virtual options are turned on in the bios.

 

[BLinux]

what was your issue with virtualbox? I since moved off vmware workstation and used virtualbox for years now. Never had any issues getting various vms running. One thing to check if virtual options are turned on in the bios.

video issues with CentOS and Fedora Linux... couldn't get resolution above like 1024 or something... which is okay in console mode on a normal screen, but this laptop has a 4k screen and doesn't scale well... so the 1024 is looks like 4" wide. wish they didn't give me a 4k screen at this point as lot of applications don't scale well.

 

[marcoi]

With virtual box you can increase the scale or zoom factor. I have a high res laptop screen as well and that was key. Other option is run your OS headless the terminal into it using putty etc.

 

[PeterF]

Hi,

I have little experience with Hyper-V, so keep that in mind. A client has provided me with a nice ThinkPad P50 workstation laptop to do work for them. Unfortunately, it runs Windows 10 Enterprise but the entire project I'm working on is Linux based. I wanted to get a Linux environment running as VMs in the Windows 10 Enterprise OS; they no longer offer VMware, and I tried VirtualBox but that had issues. So, I thought I'd try Hyper-V. I turned on the service, and I can create a new Virtual switch and VM in Hyper-V manager, but when I try to connect to the VM console, it waits and waits and then says it can't connect to the VM console. I've rebooted, I've deleted and re-created the VM, but still... I can't connect to the VM console. If I understand correctly, the process is VMconnect.exe or something like that?

So, what is causing this? Is it an access control issue? Where can I look to find out more about why this problem is happening? The error message didn't have any error code I can search for. Searching for the message itself on Google landed me on a few pages where others have experienced similar problems with either no resolution or mysteriously started working.

Any help would be most appreciated by this Hyper-V newb. Thanks.

Hi

I have a ThinkPad T460p running several linux guests in hyper-v. it is working great.
I do not remember any problems connecting when I set it up.

Can you start the VM?
Maybe the console does to like your 4k screen.
You do not need to have the console to start. you can connect later.

I run one Ubuntu Server for filesharing and one Lubuntu desktop. These are always on. Then I have many others for testing.

When you get this working you will also need to modify grub to set the desired screen resolution. This can not be done dynamically. This is of course only needed if you run a GUI

This is what I added to the grub file in /etc/default/ folder
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="video=hyperv-fb:1920x1080"

after running update-grub and rebooting I got a full screen session. you will need to put in your desired resolution.

I hope you can solve the connect issue. Maybe it is a permission issue. are your user allowed to run hyper-v guests? are you a local administrator or at least hyper-v administrator

When it is working it is really great for running linux guests

Peter

 

[BLinux]

Hi

I have a ThinkPad T460p running several linux guests in hyper-v. it is working great.
I do not remember any problems connecting when I set it up.

Can you start the VM?
Maybe the console does to like your 4k screen.
You do not need to have the console to start. you can connect later.

I run one Ubuntu Server for filesharing and one Lubuntu desktop. These are always on. Then I have many others for testing.

When you get this working you will also need to modify grub to set the desired screen resolution. This can not be done dynamically. This is of course only needed if you run a GUI

This is what I added to the grub file in /etc/default/ folder
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="video=hyperv-fb:1920x1080"

after running update-grub and rebooting I got a full screen session. you will need to put in your desired resolution.

I hope you can solve the connect issue. Maybe it is a permission issue. are your user allowed to run hyper-v guests? are you a local administrator or at least hyper-v administrator

When it is working it is really great for running linux guests

Peter

Thanks Peter for the reply.. brings some hope that I'll eventually get this sorted out. I do need a GUI on at least one of the Linux VMs since I'm going to use it for dev work; the other machines are fine with just SSH access.

So, yes, I can start the VM in Hyper-V manager, the only issue is when I try to connect to the VM console - and I sort of need that to do initial configurations.

Thanks for the tip about grub; i'm sure I'll need to do that once i get in.

As for it being permissions issue.. maybe, but how do i check? I believe i have local admin rights on the machine. I also did try running Hyper-V manager "as administrator" but that didn't help... also not sure if that translates to VMconnect.exe being run "as administrator".

So, you got it working straight out of the box without any hassles? Could be possible this client has their own setup for Windows 10 Enterprise and maybe there's some setting I need to tweak.... not sure at this point...

 

[BLinux]

With virtual box you can increase the scale or zoom factor. I have a high res laptop screen as well and that was key. Other option is run your OS headless the terminal into it using putty etc.

View attachment 4703

Well, I gave up on Hyper-V for now: no way to get it to work. Since this is a corporate machine, Microsoft won't provide any support. The corporation that gave me this machine won't support running any kind of VMs on their Windows 10 Enterprise machines. That sort of killed it for me.

Went back to VirtualBox, and it's useless. The "guest additions" just result in crashes and mouse disappearing, etc. After some tweaking, sort of got it to work, but when I exit from full-screen mode, the VM freezes and I have to hard reset it. Half the time, when I hard reset the VM, the entire VirtualBox UI freezes up and I have to kill it or reboot Windows 10.

Hard to believe this is so broken - maybe has to do with the 4k screen? I don't know... or maybe the way this Windows 10 Enterprise is setup by this company? Sadly, they only support Windows and Macs, but the contract they hired me for is all Linux environment work. I'm just going to have to do the real work on my own machines and use this ThinkPad P50 for emails and web; what a waste of a machine.

 

[marcoi]

@BLinux did you completely remove Hyper-v from windows 10? If any part of it still there it might be fighting for the same resource with Vitualbox and causing issues.

Outside of VMs, you can also try the beta linux feature of windows 10
Bash on Ubuntu on Windows - Installation Guide

If none of those suggestions work, then it might just be the way they installed windows 10, they might have some restrictive policies enabled on the laptop.

 

[BLinux]

@BLinux did you completely remove Hyper-v from windows 10? If any part of it still there it might be fighting for the same resource with Vitualbox and causing issues.

Outside of VMs, you can also try the beta linux feature of windows 10
Bash on Ubuntu on Windows - Installation Guide

If none of those suggestions work, then it might just be the way they installed windows 10, they might have some restrictive policies enabled on the laptop.

Thanks marcoi for all the alternative suggestions! I think I'm just going to let this one rest and use my own lab machines to get the work done and transfer it via scp to their Windows laptop to push it up into their environment.

But to answer your question, I don't know how one "removes" Hyper-V completely from Windows... seems pretty integrated, but I did "disable the service" and reboot and it uninstalled some files. I did notice VirtualBox refused to work when I had Hyper-V enabled; so I was aware of the conflict you spoke about. I don't think that was it. The VM in virtualbox runs, boots up, even sort of works a little bit until I do anything video related, like change screen size, or the screensaver kicks in, etc. I think it's probably the guest video driver that has an issue, it crashed when using wayland and only worked if I use legacy X mode.

The Ubuntu on Windows is news to me... interesting, but strange!

 

[MikhailCompo]

Don't give up yet! You've only just started!!

Persevere with Hyper-V as it does sound like the easier solution to your requirements.

Firstly, are your VM *guests* Linux did you say? What OS exactly?

Sent from my SM-G930F using Tapatalk

 

[BLinux]

Don't give up yet! You've only just started!!

Persevere with Hyper-V as it does sound like the easier solution to your requirements.

Firstly, are your VM *guests* Linux did you say? What OS exactly?

Sent from my SM-G930F using Tapatalk

The guest OS was CentOS-7 and was also going to try Fedora-25 Linux as a dev environment desktop. I'm not sure it has anything to do with the guest OS at this point, I can't even see the virtual BIOS screen when i start and connect to the VM in Hyper-V manager.

 

[MikhailCompo]

Does your Windows 10 machine have a firewall, or is the Windows fw enabled? Have you tried installing a Windows client to see if its the guest or your local device that is the source of the problem?

 

[BLinux]

Does your Windows 10 machine have a firewall, or is the Windows fw enabled? Have you tried installing a Windows client to see if its the guest or your local device that is the source of the problem?

i didn't check, but i would assume there is a firewall since this is a corporate Win10 Enterprice machine. not sure what you mean by windows client vs local device? this is all on one machine and BEFORE installing any guest; i simply cannot connect to the VM console of any VM I create in Hyper-V.

 

[MikhailCompo]

i didn't check, but i would assume there is a firewall since this is a corporate Win10 Enterprice machine. not sure what you mean by windows client vs local device? this is all on one machine and BEFORE installing any guest; i simply cannot connect to the VM console of any VM I create in Hyper-V.

Do you have full admin rights on your machine? How did you install Hyper-V or did your admin dept?

Sent from my SM-G930F using Tapatalk

 

[BLinux]

Do you have full admin rights on your machine? How did you install Hyper-V or did your admin dept?

Sent from my SM-G930F using Tapatalk

I installed "Hyper-V" by enabling it under the "features" section in "settings". The machine is part of a domain, but I think I have local admin rights.

 

[Micke]

I installed "Hyper-V" by enabling it under the "features" section in "settings". The machine is part of a domain, but I think I have local admin rights.

Did you ever find a solution for this? I've the exact same situation. And no, vmware and/or virtualbox is not an option.

 

[WANg]

i didn't check, but i would assume there is a firewall since this is a corporate Win10 Enterprice machine. not sure what you mean by windows client vs local device? this is all on one machine and BEFORE installing any guest; i simply cannot connect to the VM console of any VM I create in Hyper-V.

Hm. Are you running this on a machine that is joined to a domain and are therefore governed by a group policy, or is this standalone? It could be the BIOS disabling the VMX/VTd stuff, group policy disabling HyperV machine access, or who knows. Also, they forbid the installation of VMWare Workstation Player or something? Because that's my virt go-to on Win10 for those quick-and-dirty jobs.