The required virtualization driver (pcip.sys) failed to load.

Question

Dear All, I am having trouble with:

Dismount-VMHostAssignableDevice : The operation failed.
The required virtualization driver (pcip.sys) failed to load.
The operation failed.
The required virtualization driver (pcip.sys) failed to load during a device dismount operation.

The situation developed when we upgraded Server 2019 to Server 2022 on the Host. The GPU disappeared both in the VM and on the Host. I was able to recover the GPU on the host so that the system will show it as present and could also install drivers.

This was possible after I found this: https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/281c2390-1bfa-4225-878d-277535d634a5/dismountvmhostassignabledevice-the-required-virtualization-driver-pcipsys-failed-to-load?forum=winserverhyperv

However, even after having the drivers installed on the host and having recreated the virtual machines in Hyper-V, the host is not able to dismount the GPU. I can uninstall and remove the PCIP driver for dismounted GPU which shows as hidden in the device manager, but this is simply reinstalled the next time I try to dismount on the GPU on the host.

Any ideas would be welcome.

Thanks!
Atmapuri

Answer 1

We filed a tech support request with Microsoft on this topic. After about 3 months of lingering with lower level support teams, the issue was escalated to higher level support, which took about 1h to provide a solution:

1.) Locate in Registry:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\pcip

2.) Under ImagePath key, verify that the path to the driver is correct. In our case it was missing a backslash.

The correct full ImagePath is: \SystemRoot\System32\drivers\pcip.sys

Microsoft reported, that the issue was caused by an error in an .inf file, which is/was provided possibly by Intel?

Answer 2

Hello there, This might be due to Discrete Device Assignment and you might need to check this configuration. Starting with Windows Server 2016, you can use Discrete Device Assignment, or DDA, to pass an entire PCIe Device into a VM. This will allow high performance access to devices like NVMe storage or Graphics Cards from within a VM while being able to leverage the devices native drivers. Read more from here https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/windowsserverdocs/blob/main/WindowsServerDocs/virtualization/hyper-v/deploy/Deploying-graphics-devices-using-dda.md Hope this resolves your Query !! --If the reply is helpful, please Upvote and Accept it as an answer--

Answer 3

Dear Friend, You found the right topic on internet. The error message happens at this line from the referenced doc:

Dismount-VMHostAssignableDevice -LocationPath $locationPath