Hyper-V VM Intermittently Freezes at Login Screen

Ian_117 1 Reputation point
2021-04-30T17:28:48.983+00:00

HOST: Windows Server 2016 Standard (10.0.14393), Model: Dell Inc. PowerEdge R630
VM: Windows Server 2016 Standard (10.0.14393) (used mostly with File Server role)

A few times a month, we lose network connectivity to our VM and I can only connect to it via Hyper-V where it shows the Windows login screen and does not take any input (frozen). I have to power off and on the vm (restart command doesn't work).

Nothing in Event Viewer on Host and VM. I thought it was maybe an update issue because a few times it has happened during patching but not always, and no errors/things of importance in the agent we use to push the patches. As of now, it is fully patched and just happened again the other day.
Only happens with this VM; other VMs on the host are fine.

We use it primarily as an active file server. Nothing else big on there.

Any thoughts? I thought maybe it was the memory (4 GB) but the other VMs have that and it still only runs at ~50% normally. Any advanced logs I can check that might show why it froze?

Windows Server
Windows Server
A family of Microsoft server operating systems that support enterprise-level management, data storage, applications, and communications.
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Hyper-V
Hyper-V
A Windows technology providing a hypervisor-based virtualization solution enabling customers to consolidate workloads onto a single server.
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4 answers

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  1. Reza-Ameri 16,836 Reputation points
    2021-05-04T14:58:04.027+00:00

    Try update drivers on the VM too.
    Check running services and if you are seeing any suspicious services , then disable them and see if the problem persist?

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  2. Carl Fan 6,836 Reputation points
    2021-05-06T02:06:52.677+00:00

    Hi,
    Please boot into Safe Mode. Then perform a clean boot.
    https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/how-to-perform-a-clean-boot-in-windows-da2f9573-6eec-00ad-2f8a-a97a1807f3dd
    Also according to your description, I consider that something may crash after booting to the log on window. So I suggest that you could try to capture a boot log to check.
    https://support.malwarebytes.com/hc/en-us/articles/360039025073-Use-Process-Monitor-to-create-real-time-event-logs
    Hope this helps and please help to accept as Answer if the response is useful.
    Best Regards,
    Carl

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  3. ThomasK 11 Reputation points
    2022-04-12T10:27:58.23+00:00

    Hi @Ian_117 ,
    Did you ever got a solution for it? We are having the same issue in a RDS farm. Servers are getting unresponsive random. Sometimes 3 differents servers a week, sometimes it works for some weeks without issues. Already tried updating all host (HPE servers) updates (hpe drivers and Windows updates) and guest windows updates. No luck on it.
    Already checked, services, running tasks etc. Al without luck.

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  4. ThomasK 11 Reputation points
    2023-11-22T08:56:20.7833333+00:00

    It's a bit late, but we finally "solved" it by disabling dynamic memory on the hyper-v guests.

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