Tag: Permissions

Author Lance LingerfeltPosted on

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

Author Lance LingerfeltPosted on

Unable to open settings from the Settings App in Windows Server 2016/2019

In Windows Server 2016/2019 you have been upgraded to the Windows 10 Desktop Experience GUI. So, in the new versions, you are directed to use the Gear Box in Windows to get to your settings. What was happening within the Settings is that I would choose a setting that calls on the control.exe file to open a Control Panel app. I would get the following error when attempting to do that function:

Permission Denied to Open a CPL Applet through control.exe

I immediately think it is a permissions issue. So I go to try to validate the permissions so that I could change them. Turns out, that due to it being a Windows System directory, I couldn’t modify the permissions without compromising directory security with NTFS permissions:

The options are all greyed out for the directory on purpose

Now, if I open Control Panel, Network Sharing Center, etc…, I was able to access the applets with no issues. This was just happening in the Settings Gear Box Application. So, I started looking around and found that there is a registry key that needs to be modified so that your Administrator account can open these settings apps through the Settings Application:

1) Launch the Registry Editor (regedit.exe)
2) Navigate to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System

3) Change the value of FilterAdministratorToken (REG_DWORD) from 0 to 1 (If you don’t see that key, you can create it by right-clicking on any empty space from the right panel and select New > DWORD value, type the name and set the value to 1)
4) Reboot the computer and then it will be working fine.

I decided to create a Group Policy in AD to add this registry key so that it would propagate to all my 2016/2019 Servers:

1) Launch the Group Policy Manager
2) Create a new GPO and Link it to your Domain
3) Go to Computer Configuration > Preferences > Windows Settings > Registry > New Registry Key (DWORD)
4) Set the Action to “Replace”
5) Set the path as:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System
6) Set the Key as FilterAdministratorToken
7) Set the Value as 1 (Decimal Format) and Save
8) Run gpupdate /force on your servers.
9) Schedule a Reboot of those servers for the change to truly take effect.

GPO Settings

After the reboot of the server, all the apps launched correctly from the Settings Application within Windows. I am going to research a little more to see why this is like that. If you have a comment, or more information, please feel free to post!

HAPPY TROUBLESHOOTING!
PLEASE COMMENT!

Author Lance LingerfeltPosted on

Hyper-V 2019 will NOT mount ISO from a network share.

Like most IT guys. They have a repository of their ISO images saved on a network share so that they can mount the ISO if needed on multiple machines. I recently switched to Hyper-V and have been having an issue with creating VMs and using my ISO from my network share to do so.
Hyper-V Manager available through RSAT doesn’t have an option to mount an ISO or capture a drive from a machine on which is running. Instead it gives you drives of the Hyper-V host, and that would of course require you to have an ISO or the disc itself present on the host. I didn’t want to do that. I would rather have my repository share available for that purpose to allow for all the drive space to be available on the Hyper-V host.

So, I would map a network drive with my ISOs. The mapping would succeed, but mapped drive (letter) will not be visible in Hyper-V manager when trying to mount an ISO. Okay, so next I tried mounting from UNC share directly, but that would also fail, with the message:
“‘VM’ failed to add device ‘Virtual CD/DVD Disk’” & “User account does not have permission required to open attachment”.

hyperv1
Access Denied Error when trying to mount the ISO

It goes back to the constrained delegation requirement for the Hyper-V host accounts to be used to perform functions such as this. This has been a pain to say in the least, as I have also had issues with live migration with my machines not being clustered due to different hardware.

So, in researching, I found this blog post. It has helped me through this issue with mapping the shared folder with the ISOs.

The cause of the problem is that the Hyper-V is intended to run with VMM Library Server and to mount files from it, not any random share. To re-mediate this:

  • You need to assign full NTFS and share permissions to computer account of Hyper-V on a shared folder with ISO’s you want to mount.
  • In AD on the computer account of Hyper-V machine delegate specific service ‘cifs’ to the machine you want your ISO’s mounted from. Microsoft calls this constrained delegation.

Here is step by step procedure for the constrained delegation:

  1. Go to Active Directory Users and Computers
  2. Find the Hyper-V server computer account and open up its properties.
  3. Go to Delegation tab.
  4. Select Trust this computer for delegation to the specified services only radio button.
  5. Click the Add button.
  6. Click the Users or Computers… button.
  7. In the Add Services window, click Users or Computers and enter the computer account that will  act as a library server and click OK.
  8. Select the cifs Service Type and click OK.

The resulting setup should look something like this:

Constrained delegation
What the configuration should look like for constrained delegation

I added both the server that contained the ISO images and the server that I run my RSAT tools from just to be safe. I next rebooted the Hyper-V host (that is a requirement).
When the host rebooted, I was able to successfully create the VM.

Hopefully, this will also solve my issue with live migration between my hosts. I will have to test that again and will inform everyone here if that succeeds as well!

PLEASE COMMENT!
THANKS FOR READING!

References:
Hyper-V Server 2012 won’t mount ISO from a network share
Hyper-V authentication in Windows Server 2016 for managing remote Hyper-V servers through RSAT
Constrained Delegation