Hello everybody!
This video will show you how to create a Microsoft Hyper-V virtual machine, and how to recover
data from a virtual disk of such machine after a failure or when the virtual machine can’t
start.
To enable virtualization of its own operationg systems, Microsoft developed a special tool,
Hyper-V Manager.
It is a convenient tool, but the one disadvantage is that it can create virtual machines only
with Windows operating systems.
Virtual machine support with Hyper-V is available in Windows 10 Pro and Enterprise.
By default, it is disabled, and in order to use it you have to enable this tool and turn
it on.
To do it: • Go to Control Panel / Programs and Features
/ Turn Windows features on or off • In the opening Windows Features window,
find Hyper-V, check all of its boxes and click OK
•
Restart the computer for the changes to take effect.
• Now to start Hyper-V, enter “Hyper-V” in Windows search field and choose “Hyper-V
Manager”
In order to create a virtual machine: • In the opening window of Hyper-V Manager,
click on the element with the name of the computer.
• After that, find the Actions column on the right pane and select New / Virtual Machine...
• In the virtual machine wizard window that appears, click Next
• Specify the name of the virtual machine • and its location
You can select any folder you like as a virtual machine location.
If you don’t do it, the machine will be saved to disk C: by default.
C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Hyper-V\
• Next • Specify the virtual machine generation:
Generation 1 or Generation 2.
I select Generation 1 and click Next.
• In the next window, let’s give some memory to the virtual machine.
As the Wizard suggests, its size should be at least 1 Gb.
To make sure the virtual machine is not going to be too hard for your PC to handle, I recommend
setting its memory size at no more than 50% of the actual memory available.
That is why I allocate 4 Gb.
• The function “Use Dynamic Memory for this virtual machine” is activated by default.
I recommend leaving this setting as it is.
• Next
• In the Configure Networking window, the default option is “Not connected.”
If you leave it as it is, the virtual machine you are creating will not be connected to
any networks.
That is why before creating a Hyper-V virtual machine, you should go to Virtual Switch Manager
and configure your network.
Select External / Create Virtual Switch; assign a name to the switch and click Apply / OK.
Now we can select this virtual switch in the Configure Networking window.
Select it.
 Next
• If you aready have a virtual hard disk you can connect it in this window.
To do it, check the box “Use an existing virtual hard disk” and specify the path
to it.
• But we will create a new virtual disk so let’s check the corresponding box.
Specify the drive name and the folder where it should be saved.
As well as the size.
The size can be anything you like.
But it’s better to have at least 30 Gb, and make sure that your hard disk still has
enough space after you create the virtual machine.
That is because your virtual machine may become larger in the course of work.
• Next
• In the Installation Options menu, you can choose from where you are going to install
the operating system for your virtual machine - from an installation disk or an .iso image
file.
The option you choose depends on what installation media you have.
There is also an option “I will install an operating system later.”
• I select installation from an ISO image.
• I specify its location.
• Next • In the window “Completing the New Virtual
Machine Wizard” you can see all the settings you have made.
• Finish.
• The virtual machine is created which we can see from the appearing menu with its name.
• In order to start it, click Start / Connect.
• The virtual machine starts and Windows is installed from ISO image that you have
specified in the settings before.
Installing Windows on a Microsoft Hyper-V virtual machine is similar to making a clean
installation on a desktop or laptop computer.
That is why I won’t go into details.
Watch another video by our channel to see clean installation of Windows
After the operating system is installed, you will have another (that is, virtual) operating
system that works inside the operating system of your computer.
Unlike other virtual machine managers, by default Hyper-V never saves all virtual machine
files (system files and virtual disk file) into one folder.
They are stored in various locations: • Hyper-V virtual disk file is saved by
default to the folder: C:\Users\Public\Documents\Hyper-V\Virtual
hard disks and has the extension *.vhdx
• Other virtual machine files including configuration files and snapshots, are saved
to this folder: C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Hyper-V
This folder also contains an *.vmcx file – the file containing virtual machine configuration
settings.
These folders are set by default, but as you remember their location can be modified when
creating a virtual machine.
It should be noted, that *.vhdx and *.vmcx are the main files in charge of virtual machine
configuration and data (that is, of the machine’s operability).
If these files are recovered, you can also recover a virtual machine to a normal condition,
including all files from its disk.
To learn how to do it, read an article in our blog - follow the link in the description
In this video, I want to show you one trick, just in case if for some reason your virtual
machine is no longer working, and there are important files on its disks.
I will show you how to recover them.
Though Hyper-V is a virtual machine, real data can be saved there.
As we have already said, all files stored in virtual machine disks are located in .vhdx
files of the virtual disk.
Hetman Partition Recovery, the program for hard disk data recovery, has the function
of mounting virtual disks and recovering data from such disks.
You can download Hetman Partition Recovery here
In order to get access to virtual machine files:
1.
Run Hetman Partition Recovery and mount the virtual machine disk.
If there are several of them, you can mount them all at once or one by one.
 To mount a virtual disk with the help of Hetman Partition Recovery, click on Mount
Disk in the quick access menu of the program.
As a result, the window of choosing a virtual disk will open.
 Go to the folder containing the virtual machine and choose the necessary .vhdx file.
 Open
2.
As you do that, the section “Mounted Disks” containing the list of mounted virtual disks
will appear in the window, where all disks found by the application are shown.
If you mount several disks, you will see the entire disk list there.
3.
Scan the disk with the application by clicking on the disk in the disk manager
4.
After the analysis, the application will show the directory tree of the scanned disk.
5.
Find and recover the necessary files to a convenient location in your main operating
system.
By the way, you can use this method to move files from a virtual machine disk to the main
operating system.
That is all for now.
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We’ll be glad to answer any questions in comments.
Thank you for watching and good luck!