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Starting a saved virtual machine–with a missing virtual hard disk

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I came across a person with this problem on our forums recently:

If you have a virtual machine that is in a saved state, but one of the virtual machines disks is now missing for some reason, you cannot start the virtual machine and you cannot remove the missing virtual disk.

If you try to start the virtual machine you will get an error message that states that the disk in question is missing:

image

If you try to remove the virtual disk in question – you will find that we do not let you change the setting as the virtual machine is in a saved state:

image

To get out of this situation you need to:

  1. Open Hyper-V Manager
  2. Select the virtual machine in question
  3. Right click on the virtual machine and select Delete Saved State…
  4. Select Delete on the confirmation dialog
  5. Open the virtual machine settings
  6. Remove the missing virtual disk
  7. Start the virtual machine

Note – deleting a virtual machine saved state is similar to pulling the power cord out from a running computer – so there is a minor chance for data corruption / etc…

Cheers,
Ben

Comments

  • Anonymous
    December 14, 2012
    Useful information.

  • Anonymous
    January 03, 2013
    Hi Ben, is this the IDE Disk 0 which hosting the OS as well? Or is this an additional disk hosting the data which is separate from IDE 0? Can we assume same action can be taken if the disk is SCSI?

  • Anonymous
    January 10, 2013
    How about if this is on a personal machine with Virtual PC (not Hyper-V)?

  • Anonymous
    July 04, 2013
    Its quiet good to hear.

  • Anonymous
    July 18, 2015
    In my case it was a USB drive that had been attached to the VM as a physical disk, then unplugged but not properly removed.  I did not want to delete the saved state, so I did the following...

  1. Close the Hyper-v manager.  Shut down the Hyper-V Virtual Machine Management Service (all VMs stay running, just the Hyper-V manager will not run until you restart.

  2. Find the .XML file for you machine, make a backup copy

  3. Edit the file, identify the disk in question and remove it from the file .  For me, it was the whole section bracketed by <Drive4?

  4. Save the XML file, restart the VMM service then restart your machine.   Worked great for me, but don't do this unless you feel like you understand how to edit the XML file, and make sure to make that back up copy!

    • Anonymous
      May 04, 2016
      Jeff's answer worked for me and is a MUCH better solution.
      • Anonymous
        December 13, 2016
        After spending HOURS frantically searching for a solution - Admittedly there are MANY solutions out there for a generic issue (THANKS VERY MUCH Microsoft!),This one worked for me.However, the easier solution could be 'make sure that ALL drives including external ones are plugged in before you start up the VM from a Saved State'.If that doesn't work, try this solution.Don't delete any lines, replace them with an empty reference.E.G USBSTOR\DISK&VEN_WD&PROD_ELEMENTS_25A2&REV_1014\575853314541353432455243&0 HDD NONE Copy the bit between and over