Windows Server 2008 R2 powers off every hour by himself

[alexandrucovali]

Hello,

I  have a trouble with one VM on vSphere ESXi 5. It's a Windows Server 2008 R2 which is  Domain controller. I have a couple of Windows 2008 VMs, and all of them  work fine, except Domain Controller. First of all I had a Windows Server  2008 R2 Core which worked fine one week without issue. After, it starts shuting down each hour, I have decided to remove it and installed a new VM, but now with  a GUI. As usual, I was happy just one week. Now that DC is shuting down every hour.

I read all logs located in that VM's folder and on ESXi host and I don't see anything. No errors, no warnings.

I  moved that VM from one host to another and nothing changed. I installed  new DC on all hosts, but still the same. I made a HA/DRS cluster and  still the same. If a VM works as a DC, it keeps going off every hour after one week of stable work.

Power Management settings switched from Balansed to High Performance doesn't solve the problem.

If anybody has an idea where to dig better, I will appreciate it a lot

Thanks.

[Troy_Clavell]

from a command prompt of the Windows Guest have you tried to run:

powercfg.exe -h off

this will disable Windows hybernation mode

[alexandrucovali]

I did that, but doesn't work. My DC powers off, not sleep or hybernate. That's the problem. And it happens with Active Directory servers only. Even if I install a new VM and a new AD role, it starts powering off, after one week...

[a_p_]

Just a quick question since you say it worked for a week. Did you activate Windows?

André

[VirtuallyMikeB]

Good day,

Can you gleen any information from the Windows logs themselves?  You should be able to see who or what requested the shutdown, paying attention to either Event ID 1074 or 1076.  What ISO are you using to build the VM?  Is it the same ISO as the other VMs that are *not* having issues?

Thanks,

Mike

http://VirtuallyMikeBrown.com

https://twitter.com/#!/VirtuallyMikeB

http://LinkedIn.com/in/michaelbbrown

[alexandrucovali]

Windows is not activated. Could it be a problem in vSphere 5? I never had something like this in vSphere 4...

[a_p_]

This isn't related to vSphere. It's Windows which starts shutting down if it's not activated. The same happens if you install it on physical hardware. I think there should even be an entry in the Windows event logs about this shutdown.

André

[alexandrucovali]

Yes, you are right. Finaly I found that event in the Event Viewer, ID 100 which tells that license has expired and operating system will shutdown every hour. Maybe that happens on Windows 2008 R2 SP1, as I never had something like this in a Windows 2008 (without R2, without SP1).

Good to know, as this is first time when I use a R2 in test environment as Active Directory.

Thanks a lot guys