Looking to Run Windows 8 Consumer Preview and / or Windows Server 2012 (“8”) Beta in a Virtual Machine on Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V? Install Update!

I’m sure all you tech geeks like me have already started testing Windows 8 Consumer Preview and Windows Server 2012 (“8”) Beta by installing it onto bare metal or even into a Virtual Machine (VM).  If are using Hyper-V, you may have noticed some “quirky” behavior.  Fear not, for there is an update that addresses a known issue.  Please download and install: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2526776.

Symptoms

Consider the following scenario:

• You install the Hyper-V server role on a computer that is running Windows Server 2008 R2.
• You create a virtual machine on the Windows Server 2008 R2-based computer that is running Windows 8 Consumer Preview or Windows Server "8" Beta.
  

• The Windows 8 Consumer Preview or Windows Server "8" Beta virtual machine stops responding.
• The Windows Server 2008 R2 host computer displays a stop error message and restarts automatically. This behavior brings down all other running virtual machines together with the host computer.
  

Note This issue can also occur with virtual machines that are running Windows Developer Preview or Windows Server Developer Preview.

Cause

The issue occurs because the Hypervisor does not handle the one-shot synthetic timer that is also known as an aperiodic timer correctly.

Harold Wong