Windows 2000 on Hyper-V 2012 R2

So you have a Windows 2000 machine that you really need to keep working even though you know support ended in 2005. It does happen, more often than you think.

You decide to migrate it into a virtual machine and your chosen hyper visor is Microsoft's Hyper-V 2012 R2. This is an excellent platform, not quite as adaptable as VMware, but I really like it.

However your Windows 2000 VM just wont start or install, and its unsupported. Where do you go from here?


Thankfully I found this page on the inter-webs that details how to change the processor type on the VM not the hyper visor to enable legacy machines to run, sweet!

http://www.aidanfinn.com/?p=13780

This is a quote from the site with the important information

You can run the following to see the processor compatibility of a particular VM for legacy operating systems using PowerShell (where VM01 is the VM in question):

PS C:> Get-VMProcessor VM01 | fl CompatibilityForOlderOperatingSystemsEnabled
CompatibilityForOlderOperatingSystemsEnabled : True

You used to configure this setting in the processor settings of a VM. Now you can configure it as follows:

Set-VMProcessor VM01 -CompatibilityForOlderOperatingSystemsEnabled $true

You can turn it off again by running: 

Set-VMProcessor VM01 -CompatibilityForOlderOperatingSystemsEnabled $false

Note that enabling this setting requires that the VM be turned off.

That's it, your VM will now start, although note you cannot do live migrations, or even replication as integration services are not supported. So you are best to replicate the VM to another host in a powered down state after any configuration changes, and then backup your application data directly. That way you can always restore the application data to your replica VM should you need to.

Now go figure out how you are going to get shot of that legacy box for good.