Windows XP Support is ending soon! MSE for XP ending too!

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/end-support-help

After April 8, 2014, technical assistance for Windows XP will no longer be available, including automatic updates that help protect your PC.

Microsoft will also stop providing Microsoft Security Essentials for download on Windows XP on this date

 

Update: Microsoft has changed their mind. http://blogs.technet.com/b/mmpc/archive/2014/01/15/microsoft-antimalware-support-for-windows-xp.aspx

Microsoft will continue to provide updates to our antimalware signatures and engine for Windows XP users through July 14, 2015.

Congratulations to me! :-)

Microsoft has generously (re)awarded me as a Virtual Machine MVP ,  oops, Hyper-V MVP.

My goals for 2014 are a lot more blog posts on Hyper-V, other VM related topics, and IT in general.

Virtual Machines not shutting down on host shutdown in Windows Server 2012 R2

Ben Armstrong has a little blurb about  a fix included in the latest rollup for Windows Server 2012 R2

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/virtual_pc_guy/archive/2014/01/08/virtual-machines-not-shutting-down-on-host-shutdown-in-windows-server-2012-r2.aspx

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2896800/en-us

Hyper-V guest OS does not shut down when you restart the host computer that is running Windows Server 2012 R2 or Windows 8.1

Symptoms

Consider the following scenario:

• You set up a Hyper-V virtual machine on a host computer that is running Windows Server 2012 R2 or Windows 8.1.
• You set the Automatic Stop Action setting of the virtual machine to Shut down the guest operating system.
• You restart the host computer.

In this scenario, the guest operating system (OS) on the virtual machine does not shut down. Additionally, after you restart the virtual machine, the following event is logged on the guest OS:Event ID: 6008
Message: The previous system shutdown at time on date was unexpected.

Note If the computer is part of a cluster, this issue does not occur.

Cause

This issue occurs because the Virtual Machine Management Service tries to shut down the virtual machine by using the Virtual Machine Worker process. However, the process encounters a logic failure that causes the shutdown operation to fail and reverts the shutdown operation. Therefore, power cycling occurs instead of a clean shutdown.

Resolution

Update information

To resolve this issue, install update rollup 2887595. For more information about how to obtain this update rollup package, click the following article number to go to the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

2887595

(http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2887595/ )

Windows RT 8.1, Windows 8.1, and Windows Server 2012 R2 update rollup: November 2013