Win 11 and virtual machines

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I am experimenting with virtual machines using Hyper-V on a two year old Dell desktop with 16GB RAM and 500 GB SSD. I have been offered Win11 through Windows update but have declined so far. My main revenue generating software is not supported on Win11. Until that happens Win 10 is going to be the daily driver.

I got the Hyper-V virtual machine installed, finally, and setup an external virtual switch  so it could see and interact with the rest of the network resources and access the internet. Everything seems to work correctly.

I want to use the virtual machine to play with Win11 but the PC Health Check reveals that Win11 can’t be installed. According to the Health Check tool the VM has only 1 core, doesn’t use secure boot, and doesn’t have a TPM support.

Is there really no way to install Win11 on a Hyper-V VM?

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I have a win11 on a HyperV server, not a workstation.  In order to do so I had to throw it more processors and ensure that the TPM and secure boot was enabled.

Also I did a clean install not a Windows update offering.

Do you have similar options on your machine?

Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

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WSraysig

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Thanks Susan.

I’ll look at those settings tomorrow. This is a learning experience. It was a clean install of Win10.

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Windows 10 1511 added TPM support to Client Hyper-V. So it should be available to you.

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Susan

My options are almost all greyed out. I might have missed a few things in the initial setup.

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You need to shut down the VM to have all options available. I can see from the second warning that it’s running.

Also, you should use a Generation 2 VM for Windows 11. That looks to be a Gen 1.

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WSraysig

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So it looks like I got almost all the options that I need for Win11 on Hyper-V by using Gen 2 and tweaking the settings for memory and processor cores. The only one I’m stuck on is TPM enabled. That is still not working on my new VM. Leaving that aside for a moment I’m stuck with the install of the operating system (Win11) from an iso. It’s pretty obvious I’m in over my head here.

I got Win10 installed on VM1 somehow. I wish I could remember how that went. But this new VM doesn’t seem to want to recognize the iso when I attempt to connect. . Any help is appreciated.

VM2-settings
VM2-startup-screen
VM2-Virtual-boot-summary

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Please save images as PNG and post directly.

cheers, Paul

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WSraysig

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WSraysig wrote:

So it looks like I got almost all the options that I need for Win11 on Hyper-V by using Gen 2 and tweaking the settings for memory and processor cores. The only one I’m stuck on is TPM enabled. That is still not working on my new VM. Leaving that aside for a moment I’m stuck with the install of the operating system (Win11) from an iso. It’s pretty obvious I’m in over my head here.

I got Win10 installed on VM1 somehow. I wish I could remember how that went. But this new VM doesn’t seem to want to recognize the iso when I attempt to connect. . Any help is appreciated.

VM2-settings
VM2-startup-screen
VM2-Virtual-boot-summary

Do you see a TPM setting under Security? I don’t have a client Hyper-V setup to hand but it should look like Susan’s screenshot above.

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Yes, I see the TPM checked in Susan’s reply. I am going to ignore that issue for now since my main problem is getting the VM to install an operating system. Using the Quick Create -> New -> Virtual Machine wizard I can’t get the operating system (Win11) iso to install. I get stuck on this screen:

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Well I was able to get Win11 to install on my virtual machine, finally. I had to install Win10 and upgrade to Win11 but it’s done. Now to install software to make Win11 usable.

The issue I pose now is how to get the DVD drive on the host to be usable in the VM. The controller option was the default and None appears to be the correct media to use.

Anyone have an insight to share here?

 

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I’m not familiar with Hyper-V. I use Parallels Desktop on a MAC.
In my software, the setting to enable a DVD drive is a hardware choice in Parallels that tells the virtual machine that a DVD is available.
I woud try shutting down the VM, and looking through the hardware settings in Hyper-V. Once it is available there, the VM should pick it up and install a driver.

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Unfortunately the Hyper-V options don’t seem to include anything for DVD drives. A work around (usable by far from satisfying) is to copy and paste the contents of a DVD to a folder on the VM desktop. Works, but it is a kludge. There must be a better way.

 

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Progress.

I found article at: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/virtualization/hyper-v/learn-more/Use-local-resources-on-Hyper-V-virtual-machine-with-VMConnect

The DVD shows up as

However, I spoke too soon it seems:
I don’t know what tsclient is yet.

At least one source that I reviewed today showed a DVD that was attached with an iso image file from Microsoft. The iso was named:

en-us_windows_11_business_editions_x64_dvd_3a304c08.iso

The file was part of a video showing the DVD attached in Server 2016. I am working on a desktop, not a server. The comment was made that the iso was part of the “product purchased.” I have not been able to find the DVD iso file.

Back to the copy and paste kludge, at least for some installs.

 

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tsclient is the Windows installer.
This may be a possibility:
Look on the desktop and find the hardware information for the DVD. Go to Dell, use the Express Service Code for your PC to search, and download the drivers for the DVD. Then open the VM, copy the driver installer, and install it from within the VM.

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WSraysig

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Thanks for the suggestion. Unfortunately the search for drivers did not yield one for a DVD component. There were updates that were needed for the system (Precision 3440) however and I did DL and install them so that query wasn’t a waste of effort.

 

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Accessing physical DVD drive from VM (microsoft.com)

When you shut down the vm, do you have the option to connect the physical dvd drive?

Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

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WSraysig

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Susan

Thank you for the link to the Microsoft discussion on the differences between Gen 1 and Gen 2 VMs. Quoting from one of the replies in that discussion:

“My inference from this is that Gen2 Hyper-V in fact does not support access to a physical DVD drive, and this inference appears to be supported by a post to the thread you referenced that says physical DVD media support exists in Gen1 but not Gen2 (my VMs are Gen2). So, it seems that Microsoft decided to can the idea of being able to stick an install disk into a host’s physical DVD drive to install applications directly from a Gen2 VM.”

So, I am tilting at windmills here with a physical attachment to my VM.

Susan Bradley wrote:

When you shut down the VM, do you have the option to connect the physical DVD drive?

No.

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This was the same thing I was getting at in #2486323 above. In my VMs, the DVD support is added in the virtual machine software, something that is evidently unavailable in your version of Hyper-V.

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WSraysig

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