Hyper-V Manager cannot find the MSVM_VirtualSystemManagementService object

This content is 16 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

A couple of days ago, I was working with a colleague to build a Windows 7 proof of concept lab with a number of servers running Hyper-V and some virtualised server instances to provide the supporting infrastructure. The physical servers running are a mixture of Windows Server 2008 (full installation) and Hyper-V Server (the free of charge version of Hyper-V) but, after installing the Hyper-V role on one of the full Windows Server 2008 machines, we were still unable to manage the remote (Hyper-V Server) host – even after following John Howard’s 5-part series of blog posts to enable remote management.

Whenever I tried to connect to the Hyper-V server (or indeed the local instance of Hyper-V), Hyper-V Manager complained that:

The ‘MSVM_VirtualSystemManagementService’ object was not found

It turned out that the problem was related to not having the RTM version of Hyper-V installed on the server (a schoolboy error!) – Windows Server 2008 shipped with a beta of Hyper-V. After installing the update described in Microsoft knowledge base article 950050 (downloading Windows Server 2008 service pack 2 to bring the server completely up-to-date was a slow process over a poor Internet connection) the server was able to manage both local and remote Hyper-V resources.

One thought on “Hyper-V Manager cannot find the MSVM_VirtualSystemManagementService object

  1. Thanks for the hint, Mark!

    I had the exact same problem; tried to fix it with various patches, got in a complete fankle, and then re-installed my management VM, taking care to put SP2 on it before trying anything fancy. SP2 includes the latest version of Hyper-V (I assume), so after that all was well.

    Like you I had forgotten that the “gold” release of Server 2008 actually had a pre-release Hyper-V in it.

    Keep up the good work, your site is really valuable and interesting.

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