Fixing A Broken Hyper-V VHD Chain

A few weeks ago I mounted a Hyper-V VHD on my Windows 8 laptop so I could browse it in Windows Explorer (see below).

After I was done browsing the files in the VHD I un-mounted the VHD, like this.

Then, I tried to start the Hyper-V VM.  Uh-oh!  The VM would not start!  I received an error from the Hyper-V MMC that contained the following message “The chain of virtual hard disks is inaccessible. There was an error opening a virtual hard disk further up the chain.” You can see the full error message in the screenshot below.

Thankfully, a little fiddling around with the Hyper-V MMC led me to a solution which was really easy to implement.  Here’s how I went about fixing the error.

First, I opened up the Settings for the VM.  Next, I selected the Hard Drive in the Hardware list, and clicked the Inspect button, see below.

In the Virtual Hard Disk Properties, I saw an error reported and I clicked the Reconnect button (see below).

Then, I clicked the Next button and saw the Parent disk path was incorrect (see below).

I clicked the Browse button and located the VHD file for my Hyper-V VM.  I also selected the Ignore ID mismatch checkbox, then clicked the Finish button.

Finally, I closed all the settings windows and attempted to start the Hyper-V VM.  It worked perfectly!  Victory!  As Hannibal Smith would say, “I love it when a plan comes together.”

In case you are curious, this behavior can be repeated consistently.  I went through this process a couple of time to validate it works consistently before creating this blog post.  I hope this helps you out if you encounter this error.

PS: There about 109 days left until the lifts re-open for ski season in Colorado.  (Not that I keep track or anything.)