Tag: Windows 10

Aug182020August 18, 2020August 17, 20200Commentby Thomas Maurer
Eject ISO from Hyper-V VM using PowerShell

Eject ISO from Hyper-V VM using PowerShell

Posted in Cloud, Hyper-V, Microsoft, PowerShell, Virtualization, Windows 10, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2016, Windows Server 2019

This is one of these quick and dirty blog posts mostly as a note for myself. Hyper-V offers the capability to add an ISO image to a virtual CD/DVD drive and you can use Hyper-V Manager to do that, or you can also use PowerShell. Here is how you can eject or remove an ISO from a Hyper-V virtual machine (VM) using PowerShell.

This works with Hyper-V on Windows Server and on Windows 10.

Remove or eject ISO from Hyper-V VM using PowerShell

To remove or eject the ISO file from a Hyper-V VM virtual DVD drive, you can use the following PowerShell command:

Find the right DVD drive

Get-VMDvdDrive -VMName "Windows10"

Eject the ISO file from the Hyper-V VM

Get-VMDvdDrive -VMName "Windows10" | Set-VMDvdDrive -Path $null

You can also pipe these commands

Get-VM -VMName "Windows10" | Get-VMDvdDrive | Set-VMDvdDrive -Path $null

If you have multiple DVD drives and controllers on VM, you can also use the following command to be more specific on which ISO to eject.

Set-VMDvdDrive -VMName Windows10 -ControllerNumber 0 -ControllerLocation 1 -Path $null

You can also simply add an ISO to the Hyper-V virtual DVD drive:

Get-VMDvdDrive -VMName "Windows10" | Set-VMDvdDrive -Path "C:\ISO\myisofile.iso"

Be aware that it takes a moment until the ISO file is removed from the virtual DVD drive. You can find more information on the Set-VMDvdDrive cmdlet on Microsoft Docs.

Conclusion

If you want to build some automation around Hyper-V on Windows 10 or on Windows Server, PowerShell is the way to go. If you have any questions feel free to leave a comment.


Aug042020August 4, 2020August 4, 20200Commentby Thomas Maurer
Add ISO DVD Drive to a Hyper-V VM using PowerShell

Add ISO DVD Drive to a Hyper-V VM using PowerShell

Posted in Hyper-V, Microsoft, PowerShell, Virtualization, Windows 10, Windows Server, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2016, Windows Server 2019

Hyper-V offers the capability to add an ISO image to a virtual CD/DVD drive and you can use Hyper-V Manager to do that, or you can also use PowerShell. Here is how you can add an ISO to a Hyper-V virtual machine (VM) using PowerShell. There are two ways of doing it if you already have a virtual DVD drive attached to the VM or if you need to add a virtual DVD drive.

This works with Hyper-V on Windows Server and on Windows 10.

Attach ISO to an existing DVD Drive on a Hyper-V VM using PowerShell

To attach an ISO file to an existing virtual DVD drive on a Hyper-V virtual machine (VM) using PowerShell, you can use the following command:

Set-VMDvdDrive -VMName Windows10 -Path "C:\Users\thoma\Downloads\ubuntu-18.04.4-live-server-amd64.iso"

Add ISO file and DVD Drive to a Hyper-V VM using PowerShell

If your Hyper-V virtual machine doesn’t have a virtual DVD drive attached to it, you can add a virtual DVD drive including the ISO file with the following PowerShell command:

Add-VMDvdDrive -VMName "Windows10" -Path "C:\Users\thoma\Downloads\ubuntu-18.04.4-live-server-amd64.iso"

If you run this command on a virtual machine, which already has a virtual DVD drive attached, you will simply add a second virtual DVD drive to this machine. You can find more information on the Add-VMDvdDrive cmdlet on Microsoft Docs.

Conclusion

If you want to build some automation around Hyper-V on Windows 10 or on Windows Server, PowerShell is the way to go. If you have any questions feel free to leave a comment.


Jul072020July 7, 2020July 7, 20201Commentby Thomas Maurer
How to Manage Hyper-V VM Checkpoints with PowerShell

How to Manage Hyper-V VM Checkpoints with PowerShell

Posted in Hyper-V, Microsoft, PowerShell, Virtualization, Windows, Windows 10, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2016, Windows Server 2019

In this blog post we are going to have a look at how you can create, manage, apply, and remove VM Checkpoints in Hyper-V using PowerShell. Hyper-V virtual machine (VM) checkpoints are one of the great benefits of virtualization. Before Windows Server 2012 R2, they were known as virtual machine snapshots. VM Checkpoints in Hyper-V allow you to save the system state of a VM to a specific time and then revert back to that state if you need to. This is great if you are testing software and configuration changes, or if you have a demo environment, which you want to reset.

Hyper-V VM Checkpoint Types

Before we got on how you can manage Hyper-V VM Checkpoints with PowerShell, let me first explain the two different types. Since Windows Server 2016 and Windows 10, Hyper-V includes two types of checkpoints, Standard Checkpoints, and Production Checkpoints.

  • Standard Checkpoints: takes a snapshot of the virtual machine and virtual machine memory state at the time the checkpoint is initiated. A snapshot is not a full backup and can cause data consistency issues with systems that replicate data between different nodes such as Active Directory. Hyper-V only offered standard checkpoints (formerly called snapshots) prior to Windows 10.
  • Production Checkpoints: uses Volume Shadow Copy Service or File System Freeze on a Linux virtual machine to create a data-consistent backup of the virtual machine. No snapshot of the virtual machine memory state is taken.

You can set up these settings in Hyper-V Manager or in PowerShell.

Hyper-V VM Checkpoint Types

Hyper-V VM Checkpoint Types

If you are using PowerShell to configure Checkpoints for virtual machines these commands may help you.

Configure and set VM for Standard Checkpoints

Set-VM -Name "Windows10" -CheckpointType Standard

Set VM to Production Checkpoints, if the production checkpoint fails a Standard Checkpoint is created

 Set-VM -Name "Windows10" -CheckpointType Production

Set VM to only use Production Checkpoints

 Set-VM -Name "Windows10" -CheckpointType ProductionOnly

Disable VM Checkpoints for the Hyper-V virtual machine

 Set-VM -Name "Windows10" -CheckpointType Disabled

Managing Hyper-V VM Checkpoints using PowerShell

Create VM Checkpoints

You can create a new VM Checkpoint with PowerShell, you can round the following command:

Checkpoint-VM -Name "Windows10"

You can find more on the cmdlet on Microsoft Docs.

You can list the VM Checkpoints of a Hyper-V VM:

Get-VMCheckpoint -VMName "Windows10"
How to Manage Hyper-V VM Checkpoints with PowerShell

How to Manage Hyper-V VM Checkpoints with PowerShell

Applying Hyper-V VM checkpoints using PowerShell

If you want to revert your virtual machine state to a previous point-in-time, you can apply an existing checkpoint, using the following PowerShell command.

Restore-VMCheckpoint -Name "checkpoint name" -VMName "Windows10" -Confirm:$false

You can find more information about the cmdlet here.

Renaming checkpoints

To rename a checkpoint you can use the following command

Rename-VMCheckpoint -VMName "Windows10" -Name "Checkpointname" -NewName "MyNewCheckpointName"

Deleting checkpoints

You can also delete or remove a Hyper-V VM checkpoint with the following PowerShell command. This will merge the .avhdx files in the background.

Remove-VMCheckpoint -VMName "Windows10" -Name "Checkpointname"

Conclusion

I hope this blog post gives you a great overview on how you can manage, apply, restore, and remove Hyper-V VM Checkpoints using PowerShell. You can learn more about Hyper-V virtual machine checkpoints on Microsoft Docs. If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment.


Jun302020June 30, 2020June 30, 20200Commentby Thomas Maurer
Windows 10 on ARM PowerShell 7 Windows Terminal ARM64

How to Install PowerShell 7 on Windows 10 on ARM

Posted in Microsoft, PowerShell, Windows, Windows 10

As you know I am running Surface Pro X as my daily driver, which comes with Windows 10 on ARM. With the release of PowerShell 7.0.2, I want to show you how you can install PowerShell 7 on Windows 10 on ARM and the Surface Pro X. The ARM64 release is still marked as a preview. The PowerShell team is working on bringing PowerShell 7 to the Microsoft Store, which will create a much ns smoother experience. However, if you are like me and want to try out PowerShell 7 on your Surface Pro X today, you can do that.

Windows 10 on ARM runs on PCs powered by ARM processors, like the Surface Pro X. And if you want to know more about what’s new in PowerShell 7, check out my blog post. ℹ

How to Install PowerShell 7 on Windows 10 on ARM and the Surface Pro X

With the release 7.0.2 of PowerShell 7, the ARM64 build arrived again. You can download a new .msix file with an ARM64 version from the GitHub release page.

PowerShell 7 on Windows 10 on ARM Surface Pro X

PowerShell 7 on Windows 10 on ARM Surface Pro X

If your Windows 10 machine has developer mode enabled, you can now add the MSIX package to your Windows installation. You can use the Add-AppxPackage to add the .msix package.

Add-AppxPackage .\PowerShell-7.0.2-win-arm64.msix

After that, you can find PowerShell 7 in your start menu, or directly in the new Windows Terminal.

Windows 10 on ARM PowerShell 7 Windows Terminal ARM64

Windows 10 on ARM PowerShell 7 Windows Terminal ARM64

Conclusion

I hope this helped you an explained to you how you can install PowerShell 7 on Windows 10 on ARM. If you want to know more about installing and updating PowerShell 7, check out my blog post. And if you need more information, here is the official documentation on Microsoft Docs.

You can find more information about what’s new in PowerShell 7 on my blog. If you have any questions, please let me know in the comments.


Jun282020June 28, 2020June 28, 20209Commentsby Thomas Maurer
Windows File Recovery Tool WinFR

Recover Files on Windows using the Windows File Recovery Tool

Posted in Microsoft, PowerShell, Windows, Windows 10

Did you accidentally delete an important file, wiping a hard drive or partition, or need to restore corrupted files and data? We all have been there, with the newly released Microsoft Windows File Recovery tool you can recover and restore files on Windows. In this blog post, I am going to show you how you can recover and restore files on Windows using the Windows File Recovery tool. You can also use this tool to recover files from external drives and SD cards.

Accidentally deleted an important file? Wiped clean your hard drive? Unsure of what to do with corrupted data? Windows File Recovery can help recover your personal data.

For photos, documents, videos and more, Windows File Recovery supports many file types to help ensure that your data is not permanently lost.

Recovering from a camera or SD card? Try Signature mode, which expands beyond NTFS recovery and caters to your storage device needs. Let this app be your first choice for helping to find what you need from your hard drive, SSD (*limited by TRIM), USB drive, or memory cards.

I also want to make clear that this is no replacement for a backup, like Windows File History, Azure Backup, or products from third-party vendors. This tool is more of an emergency utility, you can restore files that were not backed up.

Requirements

To use the Windows File Recovery Tool, you have a couple of requirements.

  • You will need to run Windows 10, version 2004 (Build 19041), or later.
  • You can download the Windows File Recovery Tool from the Microsoft Store.
  • The source and destination drives must be different. If you don’t have a second drive on your computer, you can use a USB drive as a target for the restore. If you are storing form an SD card or external drive, you can use the internal system drive (often the C: drive) as a target.
  • The tool supports different file systems such as NTFS, ReFS, FAT, and exFAT. If you are restoring files from a non-NTFS file system, you will need to run the commands in signature mode using the /x parameter.
Read More

Jun152020June 15, 2020June 15, 20204Commentsby Thomas Maurer
Run Hyper-V on Windows 10 on ARM and the Surface Pro X

Run Hyper-V on Windows 10 on ARM and the Surface Pro X

Posted in Hyper-V, Microsoft, PowerShell, Surface, Virtualization, Windows, Windows 10

Here is a quick blog post on how you can run Hyper-V virtual machines (VM) on Windows 10 on ARM and the Surface Pro X.

I am running the Surface Pro X as my daily driver for a couple of months. It is a fantastic device and combines a light designed and the Surface Pro form factor with a 13-inch screen. But the most significant difference to the other Surface devices like the Surface Pro 7, is that the Surface Pro X is running Windows 10 on ARM. It has a custom Microsoft SQ1 chip. This limits it to run native ARM64 or emulated 32-bit x86 applications, and it can’t run classic 64-bit x64 applications at the moment. Another limitation was that I wasn’t able to run Hyper-V virtual machines (VMs) on my Surface Pro X.

With the Windows 10 Insider Preview build 19559, you were able to install Hyper-V. However, you didn’t have a compatible image to run inside the virtual machine (VM). With the Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19631, Microsoft is now also providing an ARM64 VHDX file, which you can download and run as a guest OS in Hyper-V.

How to enable Hyper-V on Windows 10 on ARM

You need a Windows 10 ARM-based PC with a Microsoft SQ1, Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx, or Qualcomm Snapdragon 850 processor. To enable the Hyper-V feature on Windows 10 on ARM and the Surface Pro X, you will also need to have installed the Windows 10 Insider Preview build 19559 or higher and have Windows 10 Pro or Windows 10 Enterprise.

  1. Join the Windows Insider Program and update to the latest Windows 10 Insider Fast Ring build 19559 or newer
  2. Upgrade your Windows edition from Home to Windows 10 Pro or Windows 10 Enterprise
  3. Install the Hyper-V feature on Windows 10You can run the following PowerShell command to install the Hyper-V feature. 
    Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName:Microsoft-Hyper-V -All
  4. Download the Windows 10 on ARM VHDX file from here.
  5. After that, you can create a Hyper-V virtual machine (VM) with an existing VHDX file on your Surface Pro X.
  6. Visit Windows 10 on ARM developer center for more details and documentation.

Conclusion

I hope this gives an overview of how to run Hyper-V VMs on Windows 10 on ARM. This is still in preview, but if you are like me and want to give it a try, you can. Let me know if you have any questions.


Jun142020June 14, 2020June 14, 202011Commentsby Thomas Maurer
Windows Terminal Color Schemes -Themes

My Windows Terminal Color Schemes

Posted in Microsoft, PowerShell, Windows, Windows 10, Windows Terminal

The Windows Terminal became generally available at the Microsoft Build 2020 virtual conference a couple of weeks ago. I already blogged about how you can customize your Windows Terminal settings and shared my settings.json file. Many people asked me about the different Windows Terminal Color Schemes I use. So I thought a blog post would be a good way of sharing my Windows Terminal Schemes.

Windows Terminal 1.0 was released on May 19, you can find more documentation here on Microsoft Docs.

I already shared a couple of blog posts on how you can customize your Windows Terminal experience:

My Windows Terminal Color Schemes

Here is my Windows Terminal Color Schemes. Since I use the acrylic effect, I post a picture when the Windows Terminal window is active and one where it is inactive.

Vibrant Tom

Vibrant Tom

Vibrant Tom

Vibrant Tom Inactive

Vibrant Tom Inactive

This one I use for my default shell (PowerShell 7).

{
            // Color Scheme: VibrantTom
            "background" : "#16171D",
            "black" : "#878787",
            "blue" : "#44B4CC",
            "brightBlack" : "#E373C8",
            "brightBlue" : "#0000FF",
            "brightCyan" : "#19D1D8",
            "brightGreen" : "#81EC0D",
            "brightPurple" : "#FF00FF",
            "brightRed" : "#FF0000",
            "brightWhite" : "#E5E5E5",
            "brightYellow" : "#FFD93D",
            "cyan" : "#19D1D8",
            "foreground" : "#FFFFFF",
            "green" : "#CCFF04",
            "name" : "VibrantTom",
            "purple" : "#9933CC",
            "red" : "#FF6600",
            "white" : "#F5F5F5",
            "yellow" : "#FFD93D"
        },

Windows PowerShell Tom

Windows PowerShell Tom

Windows PowerShell Tom

Windows PowerShell Tom Inactive

Windows PowerShell Tom Inactive

{
            // Color Scheme: PowerShellTom
            "background" : "#012456",
            "black" : "#000000",
            "blue" : "#0000ff",
            "brightBlack" : "#AAAAAA",
            "brightBlue" : "#44B4CC",
            "brightCyan" : "#19D1D8",
            "brightGreen" : "#81EC0D",
            "brightPurple" : "#FF00FF",
            "brightRed" : "#FF0000",
            "brightWhite" : "#E5E5E5",
            "brightYellow" : "#FFD93D",
            "cyan" : "#19D1D8",
            "foreground" : "#FFFFFF",
            "green" : "#00ff00",
            "name" : "PowerShellTom",
            "purple" : "#9933CC",
            "red" : "#FF6600",
            "white" : "#F5F5F5",
            "yellow" : "#FFD93D"
        },

Retro Command Prompt

Retro Command Prompt

Retro Command Prompt

Dracula

Dracula

Dracula

Dracula Inactive

Dracula Inactive

{
            // Color Scheme: Dracula
            "background" : "#282A36",
            "black" : "#21222C",
            "blue" : "#BD93F9",
            "brightBlack" : "#6272A4",
            "brightBlue" : "#D6ACFF",
            "brightCyan" : "#A4FFFF",
            "brightGreen" : "#69FF94",
            "brightPurple" : "#FF92DF",
            "brightRed" : "#FF6E6E",
            "brightWhite" : "#FFFFFF",
            "brightYellow" : "#FFFFA5",
            "cyan" : "#8BE9FD",
            "foreground" : "#F8F8F2",
            "green" : "#50FA7B",
            "name" : "Dracula",
            "purple" : "#FF79C6",
            "red" : "#FF5555",
            "white" : "#F8F8F2",
            "yellow" : "#F1FA8C"
        },

Ubuntu Legit

UbuntuLegit

UbuntuLegit

UbuntuLegit Inactive

UbuntuLegit Inactive

This one I saw first at Scott Hanselman’s blog. This one I use for my Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 (WSL 2) running Ubuntu.

{
            // Color Scheme: UbuntuLegit
            "background":  "#2C001E",
            "black":  "#4E9A06",
            "blue":  "#3465A4",
            "brightBlack":  "#555753",
            "brightBlue":  "#729FCF",
            "brightCyan":  "#34E2E2",
            "brightGreen":  "#8AE234",
            "brightPurple":  "#AD7FA8",
            "brightRed":  "#EF2929",
            "brightWhite":  "#EEEEEE",
            "brightYellow":  "#FCE94F",
            "cyan":  "#06989A",
            "foreground":  "#EEEEEE",
            "green":  "#300A24",
            "name":  "UbuntuLegit",
            "purple":  "#75507B",
            "red":  "#CC0000",
            "white":  "#D3D7CF",
            "yellow":  "#C4A000"
        },

Vibrant Tom Light

Vibrant Tom Light

Vibrant Tom Light

Vibrant Tom Light Inactive

Vibrant Tom Light Inactive

This one I am still working on. I am not 100 percent happy, so let me know if you have any ideas.

{
            // Color Scheme: VibrantInkTom Light
            "background" : "#EEEEEE",
            "black" : "#878787",
            "blue" : "#44B4CC",
            "brightBlack" : "#595e68",
            "brightBlue" : "#0000FF",
            "brightCyan" : "#19D1D8",
            "brightGreen" : "#3f953a",
            "brightPurple" : "#FF00FF",
            "brightRed" : "#FF0000",
            "brightWhite" : "#E5E5E5",
            "brightYellow" : "#FF6600",
            "cyan" : "#44B4CC",
            "foreground" : "#16171D",
            "green" : "#3f953a",
            "name" : "VibrantTomLight",
            "purple" : "#9933CC",
            "red" : "#FF6600",
            "white" : "#F5F5F5",
            "yellow" : "#FFD93D"
        },

Conclusion

I hope this blog post helps you to customize your Windows Terminal and I hope you like my Windows Terminal color schemes. Let me know in the comments which Windows Terminal Theme you like best.



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    Thomas Maurer

    My name is Thomas Maurer. I am a Senior Cloud Advocate at Microsoft. I am part of the Azure engineering team (Cloud + AI) and engage with the community and customers around the world. I am located in Switzerland. I am focusing on Microsoft technologies, especially cloud and datacenter solutions based on Microsoft Azure, Azure Stack and Windows Server. Opinions are my own.

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