Windows 10: Hyper-V Quick Create - Create or Copy a Virtual Machine

How to: Hyper-V Quick Create - Create or Copy a Virtual Machine


Information Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 15002 gave a facelift to Hyper-V as told earlier on Ten Forums. One of the new cool things is a new feature in Hyper-V Manager called Quick Create. With it you can create a new virtual machine (VM) literally (yes, literally!) in seconds. Run Quick Create, name the VM, select installation source and virtual switch, go!

(OK, I admit: creating a new VM will really take just a few seconds but as Quick Create is still a preview like the build it was introduced in, the VM created is usable only after "pimping" it a bit, changing default specifications.)

See also: ​Create a Virtual Machine with Hyper-V | Microsoft Docs

Quick Create also allows user to create a new virtual machine using an existing virtual hard disk file (VHDX or VHD). Of course it has always been possible to create a new VM using an existing VHD, but in case user selects a VHD belonging to another existing VM, both virtual machines will be using the same VHD which can be quite confusing.

Quick Create using existing VHD makes a copy of the VHD; the VM it originally belongs continues to be the sole owner and user of the original VHD, new VM uses a copy of it created by Quick Create. The new VM is identical compared to the old one.

Notice that if Windows on original VM for which the VHD used by Quick Create to create a new virtual machine is activated, it remains to be activated after being copied. However the new virtual machine created by Quick Create is seen as being on new hardware therefore being not activated. To activate it you need an additional Windows license.

This tutorial will show how to use Hyper-V Quick Create.

If you are creating your first Hyper-V virtual machine, you might want to take a look at our general Hyper-V tutorial first. It tells you how to set up Hyper-V and virtual switches to allow virtual machines to communicate with network, how to create virtual machines with different guest operating systems (modern Windows versions, legacy Windows, Linux), and gives some general tips.

Hyper-V tutorial: Hyper-V virtualization - Setup and Use in Windows 10



Contents [/i] Click links to jump to any part

[table][tr][td]Part One:[/td] [td]Create a new VM with a blank VHD[/td] [/tr] [tr][td]Part Two:[/td] [td]Create a new VM using existing VHD[/td] [/tr] [tr][td]Part Three:[/td] [td]Edit VM settings[/td] [/tr] [tr][td]Part Four:[/td] [td]Optional: Move VHD[/td] [/tr] [/table]




Part One [/i] Create a new VM with a blank VHD
1.1) Set up Hyper-V (tutorial)

1.2) Run Hyper-V Manager (Start > W > Windows Administrative Tools > Hyper-V Manager)

1.3) On top right pane, click / tap Quick Create:




1.4) Name your new VM as you wish:




1.5) Click Change installation source:




1.6) Browse to folder where your install media ISO image is stored, select ISO Files bottom right (default is VHDX / VHD), select an ISO image file, click Open:




1.7) By default Secure Boot is selected. Uncheck it (important!):




1.8) Select a network switch to allow VM to have network and Internet connection, click Create Virtual Machine:




1.9) VM will now be created, it will take a few moments:




1.10) VM is ready:






Note Do not in any case click Connect now!

VM was created using default minimum specifications with 1 GB of RAM and 1 GB VHD (Microsoft Hyper-V team, if you are reading this: Really? One GB VHD! No Windows released in this millennium can be installed and run on a 1 GB hard disk.)

We need to change some settings before you can use this VM. Continue from Part Three below.




Part Two [/i] Create a new VM using existing VHD
2.1) Do steps 1.1 to 1.5 above in Part One

2.2) Browse to and open an existing VHD:




Please notice that depending on the size of VHD you are using, creating the VM can take some time as the VHD will be copied.

2.3) Do steps 1.7 to 1.10




Part Three [/i] Edit VM settings
3.1) Open VM settings:




3.2) We need to change highlighted three things: Boot order, add RAM and virtual processors, and expand the VHD:




3.3) Select Firmware on left pane. Using Move Up and Move Down buttons move DVD Drive to top, followed by Hard Drive, Network Adapter coming last:




3.4) Select Memory on left pane, assign VM the amount of RAM you can afford. As VM RAM is away from your host RAM (virtualisation host = computer you are using to run virtual machines), be sure not to assign too much:





Information Some guidelines: A Windows 10 host needs at least 2 GB for itself to be able to function normally. Let's say you have 4 GB RAM on host, that would mean that you should not assign more than 2 GB for a VM. On the other hand, a 64 bit Windows 10 VM for instance runs pretty well with 3 or 4 GB RAM; even if you have 32 RAM on host I wouldn't give more than 4 GB to VM (exception: heavy duty virtual machines used for instance video encoding or gaming).

RAM used by virtual machines is away from host RAM only when VM is running; when you shut down a VM or turn it off, it no longer needs RAM assigned to it and returns it to host until the VM is started next time.
I decided to use dynamic memory, setting the startup (4 GB), minimum (512 MB) and maximum RAM (4 GB). This mean that VM is started, it uses 4 GB RAM but then when it's idle or otherwise not needing much it can return some of that to host, taking care that it always has at least 512 MB. When it then needs more RAM it takes it from HOST, up to 4 GB total which is the set maximum, VM will never use more than that.

3.5) Assign a few virtual processors to VM. Four is quite an OK amount:




Steps 3.6 to 3.9 below not needed if you created a new VM using an existing VHD!

3.6) Select virtual hard disk on left pane, click Edit on right pane:




3.7) On left pane select Choose Action, select Expand on right pane, click Next:




3.8) A Windows 10 VM I created needs about 25 GB VHD to function properly, another 10 GB if you are a Windows Insider and use VM to get build upgrades. As I intend to install some software taking huge amount of storage space (Visual Studio 2015 is close to 30 GB when installed completely, I decided to expand the VHD to 100 GB:




3.9) Notice that Quick Create creates so called dynamically expanding virtual hard disks. This means that although the VM sees the VHD as 100 GB hard disk, on my host HDD where the VHD is stored it only occupies what it needs; the file size is dynamic. For instance after a clean install of Windows 10 PRO with no additional software installed, VM would see it having a 100 GB hard disk with about 15 GB of it used, whereas my host would see it as a 15 GB VHD file.

3.10) All done, you can now start the VM




Part Four [/i] Optional: Move VHD
4.1) If OneDrive is set up, Quick Create saves virtual hard disks in OneDrive. Those users with only the free 5 GB OneDrive storage will get issues if a tens or even hundreds of gigabytes VHD will be stored in OneDrive and Windows starts syncing it to cloud.

If you want to you can move the VHD to another folder or drive

4.2) Shut down the VM. Open VM settings, select Hard Drive from left pane, click Browse on right pane:




4.3) The Open file dialog is shown, currently in folder where the VHD is located. Within Open file dialog, right click the virtual hard disk file, select Cut:




4.4) Still in Open file dialog, browse to a folder where you want to move the VHD, right click empty white space within the folder, select Paste:




4.5) Select the VHD, click Open:




4.6) VHD is now moved to more suitable location, you can close Settings:




That's it folks! I am sure this tutorial will be edited much shorter as time goes by and we get new builds with improved Hyper-V Quick Create. At the moment the defaults are such that they need to be changed, therefore a bit longer tutorial.

Happy virtualising

Kari


Related Tutorials

• How to Create and Use Hyper-V Checkpoints in Windows 10
• How to Create VHD of Windows 10 Installation and Use in Hyper-V
• How to Install Windows 10 as Virtual Machine in VirtualBox
• How to Add or Remove a Physical Hard Disk to Hyper-V Virtual Machine
• How to See if Hyper-V Virtual Machine is Generation 1 or Generation 2
• How to Create a Hyper-V Manager shortcut in Windows 10
• How to Import Hyper-V Virtual Machines in Windows 10
• How to Export Hyper-V Virtual Machines in Windows 10
• How to Move Hyper-V Virtual Machine in Windows 10
• How to Change Default Folder to Store Hyper-V Virtual Machines
• How to Change Default Folder to Store Hyper-V Virtual Hard Disks
• How to Turn On or Off Hyper-V Enhanced Session Mode in Windows 10
• How to Enable or Disable BSOD Crash on Ctrl+Scroll Lock in Hyper-V Virtual Machine
• How to Change Display Scaling Zoom Level of Hyper-V Virtual Machine in Windows 10
• How to use Hyper-V Quick Create and pre-installed Ubuntu virtual hard disk to setup Ubuntu Linux virtual machine
• How to Delete Hyper-V Virtual Machine in Windows 10

:)

 

How to use Windows 10's built in Hyper-V for creating Virtual Machines

Technical Level : Intermediate

Summary

Setup virtual machines using Windows 10's built in Virtual Machine software Hyper-V

Details

This article can now be found in its entirety at Groovypost.com

Setup a Virtual Machine with Windows 10 Hyper-V

Also see:

How to Use Hyper-V Quick Create in the Windows 10 Creator's Update

Thank you,

Andre

 

Hyper-V new 'Quick Create' Ubuntu 18.04.01 LTS errors on boot

After enabling Hyper-V in Windows 10 Pro and following the 'Quick Create' type wizard in Hyper-V to create a Ubuntu 18.04.01 LTS virtual machine, Hyper-V encounters the following two errors when trying to boot this virtual machine.

This is following the completion of the 'Quick Create' wizard to establish the Hyper-V settings for this particular virtual machine.

When starting this virtual machine the window that this is occurring in displays the following two errors:

• Spectre V2: Spectre mitigation LFENCE not serializing, switching to generic retpoline.
• PCI: Fatal: No config space function found.

This results in the Ubuntu boot up failing and falling back to the Linux Grub menu.

I'm using Windows 10 Pro 64bit, version 1809 on a HP EliteBook 745 G5 notebook which uses an AMD Ryzen 5 2500u CPU.

Any help much appreciated.

 

Where is the Hyper V Manager, How to I start it ?

I am trying to setup an XP virtual Machine on Windows 10 Pro.

I followed the steps in Neil Peterson article of 5/9/2016.

System Requirements - done - ok

Install Hyper-V - done - ok

Create a Virtual Switch - skip

Create a Virtual Machine

Create a Virtual Machine with Hyper-V Manager

These steps walk through how to manually create a virtual machine and deploy an operating system to this virtual machine.

• 
  In Hyper-V Manager, click Action > New >
  Virtual Machine to bring up the New
  

Uhhhhhhhhh - this step obviously implies one knows

1) Where the Hyper-V Manager is

2) How to start the Hyper-V Manager

Isn't that odd ?

 

Hyper V Import Virtual Machine

There is separate default folders for Virtual Machines and Virtual Hard Disks

C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Hyper-V

This folder contains all settings for each Virtual machines.

Have you changed that folder?

C:\Users\Public\Documents\Hyper-V\Virtual Hard Disks

This folder contains only virtual disks. On your case it's changed to E:\HyperV\...

When you want import VM you need to search it from that first location.

You can check this location from Hyper-V settings.

If you can't import existing VM's you can create 3 new Virtual Machines.

When creating those select option Use existing Virtual Disk and point disks from E:\HyperV\...

 

Hyper-V Virtual Machine not recognised

Ok that's why you can't add it... Virtual Machines are stored in a .vhd or .vhdx file. The xml file is used for the VMs but you also have to have a valid vhd

https://www.altaro.com/hyper-v/hyper-vs-relatio...

Are you trying to import one you used previously or just trying to create a new VM?