Wednesday 18 August 2010

Must Have Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V Hotfixes

Now there's a damning blog post title!

In brief, I've had a few issues since installing Windows Server 2008 R2 and adding the Hyper-V Role on my Dell Precision M6500 Core i7 laptop (if you've landed on this post and you don't care about laptops--i.e. you're an admin--don't stop reading now as this post will likely apply to you too). This post is meant to be a running log of problems and their resolutions while we await the next service pack, I suppose.

Problem #1: Blue Screen of Death/random reboots

Resolution:

KB975530: Stop error message on a Windows Server 2008 R2-based computer that has the Hyper-V role installed and that uses one or more Intel CPUs that are code-named Nehalem: "0x00000101 - CLOCK_WATCHDOG_TIMEOUT"

Symptoms, event log entries, and whatnot: Unexpected freezes, BSODs and reboots during periods of high network activity.

  • Event ID 219, The driver \Driver\WUDFRd failed to load for the device USB\VID_0A5C&PID_5800&MI_01\7&66de6c9&0&0001.
  • Event ID 41, The system has rebooted without cleanly shutting down first. This error could be caused if the system stopped responding, crashed, or lost power unexpectedly.
  • Event ID 4, Broadcom NetXtreme 57xx Gigabit Controller: The network link is down.  Check to make sure the network cable is properly connected.
  • Event ID 1001, The computer has rebooted from a bugcheck.  The bugcheck was: 0x00000101 (0x0000000000000019, 0x0000000000000000, 0xfffff880020ce180, 0x0000000000000003). A dump was saved in: C:\Windows\MEMORY.DMP. Report Id: 043010-31168-01.

Apparently this issue is caused by an Intel erratum affecting Nehalem-based processors (i.e. Xeon 5500, Core i7-800, and Core i5-700 series).

Problem #2: Guest VMs freeze, lost connection

Resolution:

None of this worked for me but changing my host power settings from Balanced to High performance did. In theory you should be able to revert to Balanced after installing and the above.

You may also want to investigate turning off TCP offloading.

Symptoms, event log entries, and whatnot: Hyper-V console freezes in some virtual machines but not others (the only one affected in my case was an XP VM upgraded from Virtual PC 2007 SP1), Hyper-V manager reports the Heartbeat as "Lost connection".

  • Event ID 5: The miniport 'Microsoft Virtual Machine Bus Network Adapter #3' hung.

...followed by...

  • Event ID 4: The miniport 'Microsoft Virtual Machine Bus Network Adapter #3' reset.

For additional information about this problem, definitely check out http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/windowsserver2008r2virtualization/thread/0408a28d-6ab8-4c85-8773-4bc42c2df40b

More to come? Hopefully not! ;-)

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6 comments:

  1. Have you found out what is causing the error message related to device "USB\VID_0A5C&PID_5800&MI_01\7&66de6c9&0&0001"?

    A user is experiencing the same error message which I believe is related to an issue where the laptop screen goes black and the external display freezes (mouse pointer won't move). I think it is a driver issue, but I'm stymied for now.

    What gives?

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  2. I believe the error message I commented about may be related, at least in my case, to Symantec Endpoint Protection. Are you running any Symantec products on this system?

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  3. @Anonymous: No I'm not but I think I recall others citing AV issues when I was investigating this issue.

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  4. Have you run into a bluescreen for BUGCODE_USB_DRIVER in usbport.sys. Oddly enough I don't have any usb devices connected. I am getting that about once an hour on a new M6500 with R2 and SP1 Beta.

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  5. @Anonymous: Thankfully I haven't come across that one but I'm not on SP1 Beta either. Might be worthwhile disabling USB in the BIOS if you can and ruling it in or out for certain.

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  6. Dell is aware of a BSOD issue on M6500 laptops. The driver that fails is the USBPORT.SYS and they have no resolution as of this posting. It appears to only occur when the system is idle for some period of time. I can work all day without issue but if I leave the laptop unattended but on, it will BSOD after an hour or so. My minidump files show that USBPORT.SYS is the source of the failure. Love the laptop but this makes it nearly unusable since I have to shut it down when going to lunch or a meeting.

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