Installing Integration Services on Hyper-V Clients

The installation of the Hyper-V integration services should be easy, but what happens if you have taken the virtual disks from a Windows Virtual PC or Virtual Server installation and is already running the Virtual Machine Additions software from that installation? What happens is that you need to remove the previously installed Virtual Machine Additions software. Except I got the following error:

It reads that “this installer may only be run inside of a virtual machine”. But as I am inside a “Hyper-V” virtual guest this error is wrong as I am inside a virtual machine.

If you are running version 13.813 of the Virtual Machine Additions or later then you will be able to uninstall them from within Hyper-V. The problem is with earlier versions. To check which version is installed display the properties for the Virtual Machine Bus device, which is located in System Devices inside Device Manager.

So how do I uninstall the Virtual Machine Additions without rebuilding the virtual guest.

1. On the Hyper-V server shut down the virtual guest
2. Share the folder containing the VHD file (typically c:\users\public\documents\hyper-v) for full control.
3. Install Virtual PC 2007 or later on another machine.
4. Create a new virtual PC using the VHD on the shared folder on the network
5. Boot this new virtual PC guest and uninstall the Virtual Machine Additions.
6. Shutdown the virtual PC guest and delete the virtual PC (this leaves the VHD file).
7. Remove the share and restart the virtual guest on the Hyper-V server
8. Install the Integration Services.