Client Hyper-V "Cannot Connect to Virtual Machine"

Question

I'm trying to run Client Hyper-V on my Windows 8 Pro machine. I was able to successfully install the service, and can create virtual machines and hard disks on my local system. I can even start them, and see boot activity via the preview window in the MMC.
I cannot, however, connect to any machines from the local system: when I do, it hangs on "Connecting to <machinename>" for 30 seconds before it pops up with the dialog:
"Cannot connect to virtual machine. Try to connect again. If the problem persists, contact your system administrator."
Obviously, because this is Client Hyper-V, I am the system administrator, so I scour the Internet to solve my problem. I see solutions related to firewalls, administrative permissions, a few other things, and nothing has worked. I also tried creating
a virtual machine on a Windows 8 Enterprise system (which can connect to it just fine) and export it for the Pro machine to import, and I still cannot connect to it, whether the VM is registered in place or copied to the host.
Some other notes:
- None of these systems has an OS installed - two locally created ones either had no boot or booted off a Linux LiveCD, and the exported one attempted to do a PXE boot. Thus, I cannot attempt to link via Remote Desktop since the computers have no names
- Hyper-V has some other quirks on my system as well: in order to stop a virtual machine, I have to end the vmwp process - which restarts the machine - and then stop it from the console within a few seconds. Otherwise, it hangs in the "Stopping"
state. In addition, none of the buttons on the side of the MMC work, but that occurs over all of MMC.
- No events show up in the Event log when a connection fails
- I am an admin on the Pro machine and have permissions to connect to machines and operate the management view

Answer 1

When you checked the event log’s what sources did you check? 
Can you verify there are not any relevant error/warning events under the following sources:
Applications and Services Logs
Microsoft
Windows
Hyper-V-VMMS
Admin
Operational
Hyper-V-Worker
Admin
Operational
If not we should enable some additional logging if possible to see what is going on.
Shutdown any running VM’s
Close all of the Hyper-V UI
Stop the VMMS service (net stop vmms)
Enable Analytic logging for the VMMS and Worker Process (see below)
Enable UI Tracing for Hyper-V Manager and VMConnect (see below)
Start the VMMS service (net start vmms)
Open Hyper-V Manger
Restart the VM
Attempt to connect (try two or three times)
Gather Logs (see below)
Disable Tracing (see below)
Enabling Analytic Logging For the VMMS and Worker Process
Open the Event Viewer
From the menu bar select View -> Show Analytic and Debug Logs
Navigate to the Hyper-V logs and Enable the Analytic Channels
Applications and Services Logs
Microsoft
Windows
Hyper-V-VMMS
Analytic
Right Click -> Enable (yes if a pop up asks about enabling the logs)
Hyper-V-Worker
Analytic
Right Click -> Enable (yes if a pop up asks about enabling the logs)
Enabling UI Tracing
Create a new text file named “VMClientTrace.config” in the "%appdata%\Microsoft\Windows\Hyper-V\Client\1.0\” folder
Copy the following XML text into that file:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<configuration>
    <Microsoft.Virtualization.Client.TraceConfigurationOptions>
        <setting name="TraceTagFormat" type="System.Int32">
            <value>3</value>
        </setting>
        <setting name="BrowserTraceLevel" type="System.Int32">
            <value>71</value>
        </setting>
        <setting name="VMConnectTraceLevel" type="System.Int32">
            <value>71</value>
        </setting>
    </Microsoft.Virtualization.Client.TraceConfigurationOptions>
</configuration>
Save the file.
Gathering The Logs
The Analytic logs will be in the analytic folder (you often have to refresh or select another source then analytic again to see them)
The UI trace Logs will be in %temp% (sometime back one directory i.e. %temp% = “C:\Users\taylorb\AppData\Local\Temp\2” for me but the logs are at “C:\Users\taylorb\AppData\Local\Temp”
Disabling Tracing
To disable Analytic Tracing just right click on the analytic sources and select disable (same as enabling)
To disable UI tracing just delete the “%appdata%\Microsoft\Windows\Hyper-V\Client\1.0\VMClientTrace.config” file.
-Taylor Brown
-Program Manager, Hyper-V
-http://blogs.msdn.com/taylorb