We are running a mock migration from our aging WS 2016 Hyper V server to WS 2019. On the old Hyper V, we have a VM which is running our router with OpnSense 25.7 OS. It was installed from an ISO file that we had downloaded from OpnSense project’s web site. I had personally created the Type 2 VM and had no issues whatsoever creating and starting it.
Fast forward to the WS 2019 server, we are trying to re-create it the exact replica of the old VM. The problem is that it fails to start:
Having tried to boot it from the ISO on the desktop of the new WS 2019 server, then from the same file but moved to C:1, then from the same file but after adding “Everyone” read rights to that folder and file, we are at a loss to understand what the new box is lacking. No matter what we try, we keep getting this error.
We verified that the ISO file successfully copied from the network onto the new WS 2019 server, by running comp on the old and new files and getting files compare OK, and then by moving the copy back to the old WS 2016 server and successfully creating another instance of the same VM from it. We also verified that we can create another, different VM on the new box, by copying a WS 2016 ISO over and using it to boot a new VM successfully.
At the end of the day, the issue seems to be with the combination of OpnSense ISO image and WS 2019 Hyper V, as different ISOs on it or the same ISO on a WS 2016 Hyper V both work fine. Can FreeBSD in general or OpnSense in particular not work under WS 2019 HyperV? I doubt that. Just need to understand what is the problem with the combination.
I checked answers on Microsoft Learn for this error message, but most of them have something to do with the truly corrupted files or with the lack of read/write permissions for the Hyper V account, which we hopefully eliminated by providing “Everyone” with read/modify access to both the folder and ISO file (which we never had to do on WS 2016). What else could we be missing?
