Hyper-V Program Manager
In Windows 8 / Windows Server 2012 we have introduced a new state for a virtual machine to be in. This is called “Off-Critical”.
What is happening here is that there is a virtual machine registered with Hyper-V – but we cannot find the XML configuration file for that virtual machine. In the past, this would have just caused the virtual machine to disappear from Hyper-V Manager. In Windows 8 / Windows Server 2012 we now show the virtual machine in Hyper-V Manager – but mark it as “Off-Critical”.
The most common reason to have a virtual machine that is “Off-Critical” is because you had the virtual machine stored on a file server or removable disk (e.g. USB) that is not currently available.
When a virtual machine is in this state you have two options:
Note that in the beta build, after you have restored the missing storage you will need to stop and start the virtual machine management service for us to detect that the configuration file is back. Once you have done this – everything should be good again:
Cheers, Ben
May be I'm wrong, but I have seen this state in some old 2008 R2 Hyper-V's and I think even in a 2008 Hyper-V.
We have always had "paused-critical" but not "Off-critical"
Found this - I have 3 VMs in this state. But the storage is available, I can open the XML files and read them... I can;t find anything wrong with the file structure. What else can cause this state?
If I find the {GUID}.xml shortcut and rename it then the server is removed from Hyper-V. If I rename it back then it reappears but with this state... if I rename this file and create a new shortcut then the shortcut properties don;t seem correct - Hyper-V will not recognise it
Any help?
Thanks this post pointed me in the right direction - VM was on an external drive...