A hotfix is available from Microsoft

Mar 3, 2009 11:00 GMT  ·  By

Microsoft has acknowledged the existence of an issue related to virtual machines running under Windows Server 2008 with the Hyper-V role enabled or Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008, where items can no longer be executed or accessed because of a certificate error. According to Microsoft, attempts to connect to a vm would result in an error message: “Cannot connect to the virtual machine because the authentication certificate is expired or invalid. Would you like to try connecting again?”

At the same time, starting a vm will produce the following error message: “'VMName' failed to initialize. Could not initialize machine remoting system. Error: ‘Unspecified error’ (0x80004005). Could not find a usable certificate. Error: ‘Unspecified error’ (0x80004005),” Microsoft revealed.

The Redmond giant is not offering an update to resolve the issue, however, the company did publish the KB Article 967902 hotfix offering affected customers a fix. The article also describes a workaround designed to also take care of the problem. All virtual machines have to be shut down or saved, following which the Hyper-V VMMS will have to be restarted. These simple steps can ensure that the vms will start and function under normal parameters.

“Even if you are not currently experiencing this issue, we recommend you download and install this update,” revealed Bryon Surace, senior program manager, Windows Virtualization. “Though this error may occur, the Hyper-V service will continue to operate. Neither the Hyper-V host nor the running virtual machines will go offline. It is not expected that this issue can be exploited for malicious purposes. Customers running Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V beta won’t experience this error.”

The update is designed to integrate exclusively with Windows Server 2008, Standard (Hyper-V role enabled); Windows Server 2008, Enterprise (Hyper-V role enabled); Windows Server 2008, Datacenter (Hyper-V role enabled); and Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008.