VM is in "Unknown"

Question

VM is in "Unknown"

Edwin Chan 25

My VM crashed suddenly and then stopped. After restarting the VM, Azure portal shows its status is "Unknown". Both the Start and Stop buttons are enabled. Although it is running now but things are not looking normal.

Mounika Reddy Anumandla 6,570 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2025-03-04T08:08:34.1733333+00:00
Hi Edwin Chan,

I understand your concern that your Azure VM crashed, stopped, and after restarting, its status is "Unknown", while both Start and Stop buttons are enabled.

Run this CLI command to check the VM’s actual state: az vm get-instance-view --name <VM_Name> --resource-group <Resource_Group> --query instanceView.statuses

If the output shows:

"PowerState/unknown" → The VM state is not detected.

"ProvisioningState/Failed" → Deployment or extension failure.

VM crashes

VMs might restart because of issues within the VM itself. The workload or role that's running on the VM might trigger a bug check within the guest operating system. For help determining the reason for the crash, view the system and application logs for Windows VMs, and the serial logs for Linux VMs.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/azure/virtual-machines/windows/understand-vm-reboot

Check if the Azure VM Agent is running:
For Windows, run: Get-Service RDAgent - If it’s not running, try restarting it.

Linux, run: systemctl status walinuxagent - If the agent is missing or unresponsive, reinstall it.

Check Boot Diagnostics: Go to the Azure Portal → VM → Boot Diagnostics and look for any errors in the serial console logs.

If the issue persists, redeploy the VM to a different host: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/azure/virtual-machines/windows/redeploy-to-new-node-windows

Along with this I suggest checking the solution mentioned by Abiola Akinbade if it might help.

Let me know if you have any further queries!

If the comment is helpful, please click "upvote" to let us know.
Edwin Chan 25 Reputation points

2025-03-07T01:33:53.7333333+00:00

Azure Portal showed the correct status after a few hours but I have not done anything.
Edwin Chan 25 Reputation points

2025-03-07T04:54:12.67+00:00

Azure Portal showed the correct status after a few hours but I have not done anything.

Accepted answer

1 additional answer

Your answer

Mounika Reddy Anumandla 6,570 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2025-03-04T08:08:34.1733333+00:00

Hi Edwin Chan,

I understand your concern that your Azure VM crashed, stopped, and after restarting, its status is "Unknown", while both Start and Stop buttons are enabled.

Run this CLI command to check the VM’s actual state: az vm get-instance-view --name <VM_Name> --resource-group <Resource_Group> --query instanceView.statuses

If the output shows:

"PowerState/unknown" → The VM state is not detected.

"ProvisioningState/Failed" → Deployment or extension failure.

VM crashes

VMs might restart because of issues within the VM itself. The workload or role that's running on the VM might trigger a bug check within the guest operating system. For help determining the reason for the crash, view the system and application logs for Windows VMs, and the serial logs for Linux VMs.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/azure/virtual-machines/windows/understand-vm-reboot

Check if the Azure VM Agent is running:
For Windows, run: Get-Service RDAgent - If it’s not running, try restarting it.

Linux, run: systemctl status walinuxagent - If the agent is missing or unresponsive, reinstall it.

Check Boot Diagnostics: Go to the Azure Portal → VM → Boot Diagnostics and look for any errors in the serial console logs.

If the issue persists, redeploy the VM to a different host: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/azure/virtual-machines/windows/redeploy-to-new-node-windows

Along with this I suggest checking the solution mentioned by Abiola Akinbade if it might help.

Let me know if you have any further queries!

If the comment is helpful, please click "upvote" to let us know.
Edwin Chan 25 Reputation points

2025-03-07T01:33:53.7333333+00:00

Azure Portal showed the correct status after a few hours but I have not done anything.
Edwin Chan 25 Reputation points

2025-03-07T04:54:12.67+00:00

Azure Portal showed the correct status after a few hours but I have not done anything.

Answer 1

Hi Edwin Chan,

I'm glad that you were able to resolve your issue and thank you for posting your solution so that others experiencing the same thing can easily reference this! Since the Microsoft Q&A community has a policy that "The question author cannot accept their own answer. They can only accept answers by others ", I'll repost your solution in case you'd like to "Accept " the answer.

Issue: My VM crashed suddenly and then stopped. After restarting the VM, Azure portal shows its status is "Unknown". Both the Start and Stop buttons are enabled. Although it is running now but things are not looking normal.

Solution: Azure Portal showed the correct status after a few hours, but I have not done anything.

If you have any other questions or are still running into more issues, please let me know.

Thank you again for your time and patience throughout this issue.

Please remember to "Accept Answer" if any answer/reply helped, so that others in the community facing similar issues can easily find the solution.

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Answer 2

Abiola Akinbade 29,405 Volunteer Moderator

You can try the suggestions here:

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/discussions/compute/azure-vms-stuck-at-status-unknown-or-updating-solution/3821385

If this does not resolve, please try and contact support.

You can mark it 'Accept Answer' and 'Upvote' if this helped you

Regards,

Abiola

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VM is in "Unknown"

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