Hyper-V General Access Denied error when trying to load a Virtual Hard Drive and start a VM

I was working on setting up a VM for my server farm and mis-configured one of the vhdx drives. I ended up having to delete that drive and recreate it in Hyper-V manager. When I did though, I received an error stating that I could not start the virtual machine:

An error occurred while attempting to start the selected virtual machine(s).
‘VMName’ failed to start. (Virtual machine ID ‘SomeID’)
‘VMName’ Microsoft Emulated IDE Controller (Instance ID ‘SomeID’): Failed to Power on with Error ‘General access denied error’ (0x80070005). (Virtual machine ID ‘SomeID’)
‘VMName’: IDE/ATAPI Account does not have sufficient privilege to open attachment ‘C:\Users\Public\Documents\Hyper-V\Virtual hard disks\DiskName.vhdx’. Error: ‘General access denied error’ (0x80070005). (Virtual machine ID ‘SomeID’)
‘VMName’:  Account does not have sufficient privilege to open attachment ‘V:\Hyper-V\Virtual hard disks\DiskName.vhdx’. Error: ‘General access denied error’ (0x80070005). (Virtual machine ID ‘SomeID’)

Causes

Each virtual machine is started using a virtual machine account. The virtual machine account needs read and write access to the .vhd/.vhdx file, but if the file has just been copied from somewhere then it most likely lacks the necessary file permissions.
That happened in my case because I had just created the vhdx drive and did not create it from the VM itself. I just attached it to the VM. So, when I booted the VM, it gave the error.

Remediation

There are a few ways that you could remediate the issue. The simplest way, if it is a new VM, is to remove the drive in the VM settings and then re-create it from scratch. That is what fixed it for me.
Another way is to add the VM GUID to the permissions so that it can access the vhdx file properly:

  • If you don’t already have the Hyper-V Manager error dialog open (“An error occurred while attempting to start the selected virtual machine(s) …”) then try to start the virtual machine now. You need the error open.
  • Click “See details”. This will show additional details, and will look something like:

‘PC-Name’ failed to start. (Virtual machine ID B9C4F7D4-0009-4BE2-90FB-9D60B1A06BDD) ‘PC-Name’ Microsoft Emulated IDE Controller (Instance ID XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXX): Failed to Power on with Error ‘General access denied error’ (0x80070005). (Virtual machine ID B9C4F7D4-0009-4BE2-90FB-9D60B1A06BDD)
‘PC-Name’: IDE/ATAPI Account does not have sufficient privilege to open attachment ‘E:\Hyper-V\PC-Name\Virtual Hard Disks\MyVHD.vhdx’.
Error: ‘General access denied error’ (0x80070005). (Virtual machine ID B9C4F7D4-0009-4BE2-90FB-9D60B1A06BDD)
‘PC-Name’: Hyper-V Virtual Machine Management service Account does not have sufficient privolege to open attachment ‘E:\Hyper-V\PC-Name\Virtual Hard Disks\MyVHD.vhdx’.
Error: ‘General access denied error’ (0x80070005). (Virtual machine ID B9C4F7D4-0009-4BE2-90FB-9D60B1A06BDD)
Where PC-Name will be the name of your virtual PC. The long sequence of letters and numbers (in my case above “B9C4F7D4-0009-4BE2-90FB-9D60B1A06BDD”) is the Virtual Machine ID. This number is significant and you need it to fix the problem.

  • On the host server open an elevated command prompt.
  • Enter the following:

You will need to substitute the path to the vhd/vhdx file – you can obtain this from the original error message, and the Virtual-Machine-ID that you obtained from the “See details” part of the error.

So the line for me was:

NOTE: If you get the message “Failed processing 1 files” then check the virtual machine ID.

  • Now try to start the virtual machine. The error should no longer be present.

There is also a PowerShell Gallery script that is supposed to remediate this issue:

http://www.ntsystems.it/page/PS-Restore-VMPermissionps1.aspx

I haven’t tried it but it looks as it would work. Please review and leave a comment should you have issues with the script.

HAPPY TROUBLESHOOTING!
PLEASE COMMENT!
POSITIVE ENERGY!

REFERENCES:
Resolved: Hyper-V General access denied error when trying to load a Virtual Hard Drive
Restore-VMPermission
Virtual machine fails to start with General access denied error / Account does not have sufficient privilege to open attachment

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6 thoughts on “Hyper-V General Access Denied error when trying to load a Virtual Hard Drive and start a VM”

  1. Thanks for the topic.

    Minor note: HTH somebody…

    powershell to loop through all your VMs and run that ICACLS command (I had multiple systems that were failing).
    # Run this from Hyper-V Server
    foreach ($vm in Get-VM) {
    Write-Host “$ $($vm.{Name}) — $($vm.{VMID})”
    icacls “””$($vm.{HardDrives}.{Path})””” “/grant” “””NT VIRTUAL MACHINE\$($vm.{VMID}):(F)”””
    }

    # only tested on VMs with one HDD.. sorry if it doesnt work for you.

    You should get output like this:
    $ someserver — 96401985-3f57-44a6-a6e1-39311e74b472
    processed file: D:\virtualserver\someserver\Virtual Hard Disks\someserver-disk0.vhdx
    Successfully processed 1 files; Failed processing 0 files

    CHEERS!

  2. argh… html formatting is getting messed up and or replacing the double quotes. sorry… still hope this helps someone.

  3. Thanks for the bit of script Steve. I cant spell my name let alone keep track of a hd.path

    1. Apologies that it still isn’t working. That exact cmdlet did it for me! Keep plugging away at it as Windows keeps a lock on access to devices and shares.

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