Windows 10: RuntimeBroker shutting down virtual machine

My biggest client is a company in Charlotte that has 14 desktops on site and 4 Windows 10 virtual machines (three for a remote office, and one for a user that moves between locations). For over a decade, the virtual machines ran Windows XP and Office 2003 without incident. However, the company moved to a new location in July, and I took this occasion to upgrade their desktops and migrate the company to Office 365. Since Office 365 doesn't work on XP, I bought four Windows 10 Pro licenses from Newegg and set up new virtual machines with W10 + O365 for the remote users. This is all being hosted via VirtualBox, by the way, because [reasons].


Three users have no problems whatsoever. However, one of the virtual machines shuts down randomly due to event ID 1074:


“The process C:\Windows\System32\RuntimeBroker.exe (COMPUTERNAME) has initiated the power off of a computer (COMPUTERNAME) on behalf of user DOMAIN\REMOTEVMUSER for the following reason: Other (Unplanned)”


The virtual machines are all logged in to the same domain under the same user. Since moving them to hosted Exchange in 2011, I've used the same username, since the only thing that differs on each VM is the Outlook profile and the login for their POS app; it's a lot less work than creating a new user profile every time.


As mentioned, the other three users aren't having issues at all. But this VM - the remote office's MANAGER, by the way - gets several "system time was changed" events in the EVT, then event 1074 with the above message. This happens at random - there's no pattern I can find to indicate this is the result of a scheduled task. It often happens during off-hours, but it also happens during the day. According to the user, there is no warning or error message - the system simply shuts down, causing her to lose whatever she was working on... and this is the type of business where each invoice or quote can take 20+ minutes to do, so she understandably gets upset when the VM shuts down without warning and she loses all that work.


Things I've tried:


- An in-place reinstall of Windows 10. The VM shut down 30 minutes after the reinstall finished.


- Moved the VM from a (possibly overworked server) to a severely underutilized server. Still shuts down.


- Cloned one of the working VMs and entered the user's Office 365 and POS login info. It shut down a few hours later.


- Created a new AD user (REMOTEVMUSER2) and logged in as that user. It still shutdown "on behalf of user DOMAIN\REMOTEVMUSER", even though it was logged in as DOMAIN\REMOTEVMUSER2.


- I deleted all other user accounts on the machine except for REMOTEVMUSER2. It actually stayed up all weekend, but shut down around 3:30 this afternoon with the same error message shown above, only under the REMOTEUSER2 account.


- Upgraded to the October 2018 Update. It shut down a few hours later.


- All the obvious stuff, including: scanning with Windows Defender and Malwarebytes (no problem found), CHKDSK (no problem found), SFC /SCANNOW (no problem found). I even tried disabling the TIME BROKER service, but that didn't help.


I'm at my wit's end here. The only thing I haven't tried is starting over from scratch - that's because I'd have to call the POS vendor to get him to reinstall the POS client on the new system, and the vendor has been out of town (and costs $$$$).


Any suggestions? Thanks so much in advance!

:)

 

Clean install of W10 not possible in Virtual Machine.


Please get a cup of coffee, lean back and think an answer for these two questions. Take your time, then check the answers below the questions:

Questions:

1. If you do a clean install of let's say Windows 10 Insider Build 10525 on a totally new computer which has never had an activated Windows 10 on it, does it activate?
2. If you do a clean install of Windows 10 Insider Build on a computer where the underlying Windows 10, upgraded from a qualifying old operating system has already been activated, does it activate?

Answers:

1. No, of course not.
2. Yes, of course.

Why do you think that a virtual machine would make any difference? You have tried to install Windows 10 on a totally new machine which has never had an activated Windows 10 installed, therefore the Microsoft activation servers block the activation due invalid machine ID. In the highlighted part in below quote you admit your mistake yourself, plain and simple, yet you when doing this wrong draw conclusion that even if done correctly it would not work:

What you have tried is essentially the same as if you took a brand new real physical PC without any operating system, which has never had any operating system, and then installed Windows 10 Insider Preview wondering why it does not activate! Virtual Machines behave exactly the same way; if you want to clean install Windows 10 Insider Preview and get it activated you must do it on an existing virtual machine, one which has already had an upgraded Windows 10 activated. This "computer", the virtual machine, its machine ID is marked on activation servers as valid and activated and it will of course activate.

Be it a virtual machine or a physical computer, you cannot activate a clean installed Windows 10 Insider Preview on a totally new machine. How difficult can this be to understand?

When clean installing Windows 10 Insider Preview on a computer which has already had a previous Windows 10 Insider activated, you do not use the product key! It will be asked twice, once before the installation starts and once after the last reboot to OOBE phase. In both cases you skip the product key and your Windows will be automatically activated.

 

Virtual Machine on SurfaceBook2

Hello,

We are meeting hard time installing our soft - does not work on virtual machine - on Surface Book 2.

Customer Surface runs Windows10Pro on virtual machine and the owner seems to know nothing about virtual machine. We do not understand!

We know Surface Book comes with Win10S and could upgrade to Win10Pro.

At that time, does upgrade create a virtual machine?

Form where came this virtual machine? Really lost!

we asked our customer for running CMD>Systeminfo | findstr /i mod yielding the following.

System Model : Surface Book 2

[01]: Intel64 Family 6 Model 142 Stepping 10 GenuineIntel 1910Mhz

Best Regards



***Moved from Surface Book 2 / Install, update, and repair***

 

Virtual Machine in Win10

Hi Brian,

You can actually create a Virtual machine to your computer, just follow the steps from this

link.

Thanks.