Hyper-V Question about nested virtual machines. VM cannot start because one of the Hyper-V components is not running

Question

Hello,

I have a question about a nested virtual machine that for some reason i cannot start I'm unsure why.

Here is my setup

1x host machine (Win 11 23H2 Pro)

1x virtual machine inside that host machine (W11 23H2 Pro)

1x virtual machine inside that virtual machine (W11 23H2 Pro) <-- The nested one)

For some reason which I cannot understand the virtual machine cannot start. I don't know why

Whenever I try to run the virtual machine I get an error telling me one of the Hyper-V Components is not running so the virtual machine cannot start.

I've scoured the internet I ran this command Set-VMProcessor -VMName <VMName> -ExposeVirtualizationExtensions $true

My output is ExposeVirtualizationExtensions : True when i run the command Get-VMProcessor -VMName "VM" | Format-List *

I'm at a loss, I don't understand what I am missing.

The host PC has an Intel i9 14900K.

Does anyone have any insight as to what I could be missing to get this virtual machine running inside my already existing virtual machine?

I am using Hyper-V as the platform to run the virtual machines, I'm trying to not go the VMWare workstation route or Virtual Box

Any help would be appreciated.

Thank you!

***moved from Windows / Other/Unknown / Install, upgrade, and activate***

Answer 1

Hello,

Anyone have any insight on this?

Thanks

Answer 2

Hi，

Are there any details in the error message? See it there are any errors in the Hyper-V logs under Application and Services Logs \ Microsoft \ Windows.

Also open cmd/powershell as administrator in the virtual machine on the physical host and run bcdedit.exe. Make sure that hyervisorlaunchtype is Auto. If not, run "bcdedit.exe /set hyervisorlaunchtype auto" and reboot the VM.

Open Services.msc and make sure Hyper-V Machine Management Service ( vmms ) and Hyper-V Host Computer Service ( vmcompute ) are running. If not, set the start type to Automatic and start the services manually.

Answer 3

Hello,

I actually found the solution to the problem.

I had to run this command twice (I have no idea why)

Set-VMProcessor -VMName <VMName> -ExposeVirtualizationExtensions $true

The clue that brought me to this was after running the command the first time with the VM closed, when I went into task manager and performance I saw that virtualization was not present. So I closed the VM and ran the command again, started up the VM and then virtualization was present under task manager / performance.

Once I had that I was able to boot the nested VM.

I'm not sure why I had to run it twice but running it twice solved my problem.