Hyper-V:No Network when installing Windows Server 2008 Core as Guest OS

When you install Windows Server 2008 as a Guest OS on a Windows Server 2008 running Hyper-V role, you may find this guest OS without any network when booted up. This could happen if the Integration Services is not installed on the Guest OS. The Integration Services installs the Guest OS components as in any other virtualization system like VMWare or VirtualBox.

Before going through the process of installing the Integration Services on the Guest OS lets do some basic checks. Check if the VM guest is actually connected to a Virtual Network (should have already been created).

In the Hyper-V Manager, click the VM and then its settings button in the bottom right of the window. From the settings window, check if the network adapter is listed in the leftpane. If found, click on it to confirm the network connection and the MAC Address settings. Default is to assign Dynamic MAC Address but I rather prefer using a statiC MAC-Address for the reason it can avoid confusion during network troubleshooting.

If this looks good then let us proceed to install the integration services for the Guest OS.

While the VM is running, from the VM window menu, click Action and click “Insert Integration Services Setup Disk“. This should mount the VMGuest.iso as a CD/DVD drive. On mine, it mounted on drive D:

Browse to the drive on which it is mounted (D: here) and open the Support folder and then x86 or AMD folder based on your platform (x86 here) as follows:

C:\Users\Administrator> D:

D:\> cd support\x86

D:\support\x86>setup.exe

Here, you should find a setup.exe file, yes you guessed it, run the setup program to install the integration services. Click OK when prompted to confirm. Once installation is complete, reboot your VM and should find the Network available.

If this still doesn’t work, shutdown the Guest Windows Server 2008 Core and click settings then click “Add Hardware” then select “Legacy Network Adapter” and click Add. This should add a Legacy Network adapter in the leftpane, click on it and again select a Virtual Network, set MAC Address (if using static) and click OK. Reboot the Guest Windows Server 2008 Core installation and should find the network.

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