Does Service Pack 1 (or other updates) break Windows 2008 R2 running in a KVM?

unleeshop

Member
Jul 21, 2009
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We've been happily running Windows Server 2008 R2 in a KVM with ProxMox as a production file server for quite some time with few problems. Today we found the Win2008 KVM was no longer serving and when rebooted, it would go to a black screen after initially showing the Windows splash screen. It can boot to safe mode or recovery mode but nothing I can do lets it work with a normal boot. When we booted a 5-day-old snapshot of this VM on our backup host system, it was fine, but I see that it has significant Windows updates pending including a "Service Pack 1" that claims to have many enhanced virtualization features, and that requires a reboot mid-update. I'm wondering if anybody has observed the most recent Windows updates "breaking" a Windows 2008 KVM. I'll be experimenting with a copy of the backup snapshot (with an altered MAC address), hoping that Microsoft did not do something that will ruin what has been a nice, stable, flexible virtual hosting setup.
 
I installed recently a bunch of windows 2008 R2 VM, with Proxmox 1.8, and each time installing SP1 (not by windows update, but from a service pack I downloaded), and everything went OK. So, no, I did not experienced any problem with SP1 and 2008 R2.
 
That sounds right. Thanks to snapshots and a backup server, I was able to unpack an earlier snapshot (changed the MAC address and VM number), and let it do SP1 and other updates, and it was happy. Tomorrow I'll change things back, restore data files, and make this my production server, and probably all will be well - I guess it was some other glitch to blame. However, I DID turn off automatic installation of Windows updates: I want to "be there" to watch when updates run in case something goes awry.
 

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