Windows 8, Hyper-V, BitLocker and “Cannot connect to virtual machine configuration storage”
So I am now working at a new professional services company in South East England (Ballard Chalmers) who use Hyper-V throughout their DEV / TEST environments. I have previously been a VMWare Workstation person myself (and I still think the simplicity and ease of the user interface is unmatched) but for the foreseeable time I will be running Windows 8.1 Pro on my laptop as a Hyper-V host.
Before we get started it is worth describing my setup:
- Windows 8.1 Pro
- 3rd Gen Intel i7-3820QM CPU
- 32GB DDR3 RAM
- Two physical disk drives
- C:\ SYSTEM – 512GB SSD (for Operating System, Files and Applications)
- D:\ DATA – 512GB SSD (for Hyper-V Images and MSDN ISOs) (running in an “Ultra-Bay” where the Optical Drive used to be)
Now like most modern laptops I have a TPM (Trusted Platform Module) on my machine so I also have BitLocker encryption running on both my C: and D: drives (for those who are interested I barely notice any performance drop at all .. and I can still get 550 MB/s sustained read even with BitLocker enabled).
Saved-Critical – Cannot connect to virtual machine configuration storage
Now I noticed from time to time that my Virtual Machines were showing error messages when my computer started up. I noticed it here and there until Thomas Vochten (@ThomasVochten) also mentioned he was getting it every time he started his machine up.
Note – You can get this error for all sorts of reasons, particularly if you have recently changed the Drive Letters, re-partitioned your hard disks or moved a VM. In this case I was getting the error without doing anything other than turning my laptop on!