Windows Server 2008, Hyper-V, and the Infamous Blue Screen of Death :-)

Tags: Hyper-V, Virtualization, Windows Server 2008

Yep, I was getting it...a lot.  After downloading and running the Debugging Tools for Windows and reviewing my memory dumps, I finally found a meaningful message that I used to begin my search for a fix.  Generally speaking, this was the message in my memory dumps (both Minidump.dmp and MEMORY.dmp): CLOCK_WATCHDOG_TIMEOUT.  I say "generally speaking" because there's much more to it than that, but this message was the one consistency I found.

If there's one thing that I have to admit, it's that I've always been terrified of the BSOD and have been known to give up on a machine once this starts presenting.  However, my experience went differently this time...mostly because I just bought a new laptop and dropped some serious $$ for it.  I'm using my laptop to run Windows 7/Windows Server 2008 R2 in a dual-boot mode (not booting into a VM, mind you), and using Hyper-V as I need that for the SharePoint 2010 classes I'm teaching.  I was only being presented with the BSOD when booted into my Windows Server 2008 R2 environment.  Hooray!  I don't know if this helps anyone, but my machine is an HP Pavilion dv7-4080 i7 with ATI Mobility Radeon Premium Graphics (and no, the problem was not the graphics driver).  Sweet machine, by the way.

SystemInfo

I started doing some online searching and eventually came across the fix here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/975530.  I did NOT download and install the hotfix.  Instead, I applied the workaround registry edit.  The last time my machine gave me the BSOD was August 31st, 2010.  I've had it up and running ever since without any issues.  I've been able to boot into both Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 without issue.  I've been running Hyper-V and SharePoint 2010 images to my heart's content without issue.  After a few weeks of wondering if my laptop has been fixed, I'm confident enough now to say that it is.

Disclaimer:  I'm officially NOT recommending that this will solve anyone else's BSOD in Windows Server 2008 R2.  More than anything, I really just wanted to have this link available somewhere for me to reference in the future.  :-)  Keep at it, you'll figure it out.