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Windows won’t boot after activating Hyper-V in Windows 8

Windows 8 logoOnly a week since installing Windows 8 and I’ve already managed to break something… :S

On enabling Hyper-V in the “Turn Windows Features On or Off” menu, I was prompted to restart to complete the installation. It rebooted, installed some stuff, then rebooted again. At that point, it got as far as the Windows logo and then nothing – no spinner, no HDD light, no feedback – just the black screen and the Windows logo.

The problem with having your PC break is you’ve lost the simplest way of Googling for a solution, so after much faffing around on my phone, I came across this post – it talks about Windows Server 8, but the common feature was we both have a Gigabyte USB3.0 motherboard… and sure enough, disabling the USB3 controller stopped it hanging on boot.

For anyone that’s interested, I did this by restarting, entering the bios settings screen, then disabling it in there. The exact location of the option will probably depend on your motherboard, but look out for something labelled “USB 3 controller”.

I did have another minor issue after that, whereby it ran Windows diagnostic and asked if I wanted to restore to an earlier point – I said no. Not sure why, if I’m honest. But then it sat with the HDD light flashing manically for about 10 minutes until I turned off the power and booted up again. Everything now seems to be fine!

I don’t know if it’s an incompatibility with the motherboard, or if a patch will come along at some point to fix it, so I’m disabling Hyper-V for now – having 2 USB3 ports is a lot more useful to me right now, especially with a VMWare license to hand and a pretty decent open source alternative available!

Incidently, I did try to install Ubuntu before I uninstalled Hyper-V, and it seemed to work alright – plus the Hyper-V management software looks really useful. Definitely some real potential there. Shame.


18 Responses to “Windows won’t boot after activating Hyper-V in Windows 8”

  1. SIlverphoenix

    I had the same problem, and also with a gigabyte USB 3.0 motherboard. It has been hard to find this article, thanks!!

  2. NickC

    I get this too (Win8 Enterprise RTM) but on a Zotac H77ITX-A-E motherboard. It’s got an “Intel USB 3 eXtensible Host Controller” and like you I’d rather have that working than Hyper-V right now. Here’s hoping for a hotfix one day…

  3. Dave

    Same problem here and with a gigabyte usb 3 motherboard… thanks so much for pointing this out. Saved a lot of frustration!!

  4. MS

    My PC still won’t boot! Any help? 🙁

  5. Mike

    Same problem with a gigabyte usb3 motherboard. Thank you!

  6. If you are using Gigabyte Motherboard, Just update to their one of the UEFI Based BIOS, it will work fine.

    kunaldeo.blogspot.com

  7. Isaac

    Had this exact same problem (except I tried installing media centre, IE10 and hyper-v all at once). Rebooted to black screen with blue logo, I waited over an hour (wondering if it was somehow downloading a large install file or something). System restore didn’t work, I eventually found this post on my phone. I have gigabyte USB 3.0 mobo and disabling it fixed my problem. Don’t even want hyper-v now haha. Am going to try updating my BIOS now anyway, as I hear that it speeds up boot time.

  8. Ben

    Some issue here, Gigabyte mobo, disabling USB3 did the trick. Shame I now have to uninstall hyperv and go back to VMware. Hyperv was kind of then reason for going to 8…..

  9. Fabrice

    I had the same problem. Did a “Refresh” and I lost everything installed (but I did not lose my personal files… Yes!)

    Anyway, I need to try your solution but before… I’ll backup my crap :p

    It’s kinda annoying (for my devices) to disable the USB3 controler to make it works.

  10. Fabrice

    My problem is solved :p

    I’ll copy/paste my post from the MSDN forum :

    I had the same issue and now it works.

    The issue is linked to that (even with the latest version of Windows 8): http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2693144?wa=wsignin1.0

    First you need to download the latest version of the U1e(UEFI BIOS).

    The archive contains 3 files that you need to copy on your USB stick but wait… You need to do something special and not just copy the files.

    You need to create a bootable USB stick.

    I used the Rufus tool for that: http://rufus.akeo.ie/

    Launch the tool and choose the FreeDOS (in the dropdown). No need to change the default value for other options.

    When it’s done, copy the 3 files from the archive you downloaded on your UBS stick. If Windows asks, replace the autoexec.bat

    Ok now it’s time to reboot your computer…

    Enter the BIOS settings and choose to boot on your USB device then save and exit.

    The system will reboot on your USB stick and if you don’t touch your keyboard the setup will start after a few seconds (I didn’t choose the keyboard language, the setup started alone).

    When the BIOS is updated the system will ask you to shutdown your computer and to remove the power cable.

    So turn it off, remove the cable, remove the USB stick and then plugin your cable and start your computer.

    The system will ask you to choose the default setup and boot/reboot -> Choose default setup with reboot.

    Windows will boot, it will configure your system for a few minutes and then… Surprise! It’s ok! (It was for me).

    If you go back to your BIOS settings (after a reboot) you’ll see that the USB3 controller is enabled by default :p

    I hope this will help you.

  11. Grissino

    I have a Gigabyte too but an old one with no USB 3 and the same problem 🙁

  12. George

    I experience the same problem with an AsRock AOD790GX/128M, BIOS 1.90. However, there is NO USB 3.0 I could disable. Till now I have no solution to get the system started with Hyper-V feature enabled.

    I also had the “no repair -> hardisk party” you describe. I as well switched off the system after waiting for 10 minutes.

    • George

      SOLUTION for AOD790GX:
      I found out that you have to disable SURROUND VIEW and Siedport+UMA if you operate bothe internal and PCI graphics to make it work.

  13. Rob

    I have a Gigabyte Z68X-UD4-B3 board and the solution was to install the lastest UEFI “BIOS” (I was running version F8 of BIOS). Following this my Hyper-V install worked fine.

    I didn’t have to reinstall the Os. I didn’t lose any data and I didn’t have to reinstall any drivers except for a problem with the X-Fi drivers which I had when I first installed windows 8 anyway.

    UEFI was installed using the .exe contained in the download. I just created a bootable USB drive and put the UEFI update on that and was done in 10 minutes.

  14. Eric

    Just wanted to add what I’ve found out for my hp laptop’s Bluetooth driver fixed my problem.

    I updated my Ralink Bluetooth 4.0 Adapter’s driver to version 9.2.10.10 fixed my problem too. I believe that it was at 9.2.10.6. My laptop is an hp g7 2270us.

    The hp forum thread that led me to this solution is at:

    http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Desktop-Lockups-Freezes-Hangs/Cannot-boot-if-HP-ENVY-Bios-Virtualization-enabled-for-Win8/m-p/2538189#M22348

  15. Dado

    THANK YOU!

  16. This appears to be related to power management – very annoying thing. I am having the issue with an Envoy 700-216 – will try and figure out if there are driver config options that will get us around this….

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