Tag Archives: hyper-v

WinPE 5.0 will not boot on Hyper-V properly if start-up memory is less then 1024 Mb

Published / by Rens Hollanders / Leave a Comment

Since Windows 8.1 is here, and I’m a deployment enthusiast who likes to work with new things, I needed to upgrade my own system to Windows 8.1.

After this was complete I immediately installed the Hyper-V client role on my machine and created a Windows Server 2012R2 with MDT 2013 and Windows Assessment and Deployment Kit 8.1 for Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012R2.

During the installation of the Windows Server 2012R2 in Hyper-V I received the following error: “Error code: 0xE0000100

figure 1.1: Windows Server 2012R2 installation error

W2012R2_error

Later on it appeared to me that addressing less then 1024 Megabytes of memory, caused this error.

After my server and MDT 2013 where succesfully installed, I wanted to do some deployment testing using one of my VM’s which I have configured as following:

figure 1.2: Hyper-V Machine Configuration – Memory

W2012R2_hyper-v_config

Since I’m only using Hyper-V for my own lab/test environment and my client machine has 16 Gb of RAM memory, I always check the “Use Dynamic Memory for this virtual machine” checkbox, thinking that if my virtual machine needs more memory then 512 Mb, it will claim it by itself!

By increasing the memory configuration in Hyper-V for this particular virtual machine from 512 Mb to 1024 Mb the installation error of Windows Server 2012R2 was resolved, which got me thinking…

If Windows Server 2012R2, Windows 8.1 (which has been released at the same time with these two operating systems) and WinPE 5.0, all have the same kernel, increasing the memory from 512 Mb to 1024 Mb on a virtual machine which I’m going to to use for MDT deployments should solve my problem that WinPE 5.0 stalls during boot, and shows no MDT wizard screens within WinPE, and my assumption was correct

So, if you encounter this on your own lab environment, or using WinPE 5.0 on Hyper-V, then make sure the virtual machine you are using has at least 1024 Mb of startup memory available!

Almost weekend! Cheers! 😀