Windows 8: Hyper-V Issues Solved

A quick post to detail my struggles with Hyper-V installation

I recently upgraded to Windows 8 Pro and wanted to take use of Hyper-V, Microsofts hypervisor / virtual machine host.

Enabling Hyper-V in Windows was tricky however, here are the steps I went through:

- Search start screen for "windows features" in the "settings" search and click "turn windows features on or off"

- Turn on "Hyper-V"

- Machine will need to reboot

- For me, Hyper-V wasnt working when it came back up, reboot again. Guides say you may need to pull out power cable when it's off and remove battery.

- Hyper V worked but trying to start a VM or install a network switch gave "cannot connect to localhost" issues

- I went to network adapters, my ethernet adaptor and then installed the "hyper-v" protocol. This disabled my ethernet access

- In frustration I removed Hyper-V

- I calmed down and re-enabled Hyper-V

- This time everything worked fine

Summary:

"localhost" issues with Hyper-V are networking related, your networking may not have installed cleanly
Re-installing can help