Hyper-V Guest Drops Network Connection

I am in the process of setting up a new server…pretty much a fairly decent sized box that will house a new Hyper-V setup.

The large red-glowey thing on the end is supposed to replace a half dozen smaller machines I have laying around and has the capacity to basically run about 9-10 machines on it. So step one of the setup in getting an internal domain up and running on Hyper-V is setting up the DC…no sweat…I have created templates and everything so I have a new box up and running with AD,DNS,DHCP…etc..etc in about 30 minutes….

Now in the Hyper-V settings I have the network wired to one of the physical network cards so that I can have internet access from within the “private network” on the box that the DC is controlling. Now internet is up and working as I have followed all the standard setup procedures… EXCEPT… when I try to do anything other than simply browse Bing the network connection drops! And I do mean drops….no internet…no DNS resolution…no ping outside of the virtual server. This also goes for Windows Update as well as just simply trying to validate the license. Everything brings the network to a halt….not the network on the base box…oh no …that is still up and churning away and easily confirmed with a continuous ping attempt in a command window….

Now you may say to yourself…that you have heard of something like that possibly here….

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2223005

Seems there is a little problem with the network adapter drivers somewhere that is causing this to happen. Except when you try to load the fix it will tell you “So Sorry! This patch does not apply to your computer”. Then I thought…oh I am running SP1 and these other things tell me this is fixed in SP1 already cause they just roll up all those patches right? Wrong! Seems like this is the little bug that cannot be kept down and has now reappeared Post-SP1. So now you have another fix to look for which you can find here….

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/974909

Okee dokee…why not apply another hotfix to the Host operating system. Now I go about the process of requesting the hotfix and downloading and installing on the host following the directions on the page. I reboot the Host and FAILURE! Yep, that’s right the FAIL-WHALE has come to visit ol’ AJ. Now what could have gone wrong… you may do like me and

1. Try to install on the Guest OS(hey couldn’t hurt but no won’t work)

2. Try to reconfigure the network cards

3. Try to remove and re-add the networking in Hyper-V

None of these worked and I was frustrated as all get out. Until I notice on the earlier KB article the following….

After you install this hotfix on the Hyper-V server, you must update the integration components in the VM that is running Windows Server 2003. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Use Hyper-V Manager to connect to the VM.
2. The Virtual Machine Connection tool starts.
3. On the Action menu, click Insert Integration Services Setup Disk.

Surely, this couldn’t be it…cause A. It’s not 2003 & B. Surely Microsoft would not have left out an important step like this…

However, I gave it a try and guess what…the components update themselves and then once you reboot you will find that Windows Update has like a freakazillion updates for you to apply to your new DC.

Hopefully, this post will help some people out there avoid the utter frustration that I had to go through in order to get something simple like external network access up and running in a Hyper-V instance.

Cheers!
AJ