Problems with Virtual Server and Automatically Restarting Virtual Machines

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Per this KB article: https://support.microsoft.com/kb/941125

There is a known issue with Virtual Server and virtual machines which are configured to 'save state' when the system is shutdown - and then to automatically restart when the system is powered on.

Thankfully most systems do not see this problem (it is caused by a race condition that is relatively hard to trigger).  There are a couple of things you can do if you are seeing this problem:

  1. Call Microsoft Product Support to get a hotfix for the issue
  2. Configure your virtual machines to shut down (instead of save state) when the physical computer shuts down.
  3. Create a blank virtual machine that is connected to all of your virtual networks, configure it to turn off at system shut down and then to start automatically, and then configure all of your other virtual machines to start automatically with a delay of 60 seconds.

Cheers,
Ben