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Virtual Machine Manager lost the connection to the virtual machine when connecting to a Hyper-V VM

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This article fixes an issue in which you can't connect to a Hyper-V virtual machine (VM) and receive error Virtual Machine Manager lost the connection to the virtual machine.

Original product version:   System Center Virtual Machine Manager
Original KB number:   2288932

Symptoms

When authenticated to the System Center Virtual Machine Manager Self-Service Portal (SSP), selecting a virtual machine (VM) hosted on Windows Hyper-V and clicking Connect to VM results in the following error message being displayed on a white screen:

Virtual Machine Manager lost the connection to the virtual machine because another connection was established to this machine.

Consider the following scenario:

  • Two user accounts exist: User1 and User2.
  • User1 isn't a configured in SCVMM anywhere.
  • User2 is a member of a self-service user role in SCVMM and is the owner of a VM.
  • User1 logs on to a Windows client and connects to the SSP where they authenticate as User2.
  • The VM owned by User2 is selected from the list and the Connect to VM button is clicked.

In this scenario, the error message above is displayed.

Cause

This issue can occur because the credentials for the user account logged on to Windows (User1) are passed through instead of those used to authenticate to the SSP (User2).

By default the Do not store my credentials radio button is selected which causes this behavior.

User1 can be authenticated on the Hyper-V host, but Authorization Manager (AzMan) fails to find any record of their privileges to connect to the VM's console. (As authentication succeeds, it is not considered a failed logon attempt.)

Resolution

To resolve this issue, select the radio button Store my credentials on the logon page of the SSP. By doing this, the credentials entered here are passed through when Connect to VM is clicked.

More Information

If User2 was logged on to Windows, the problem would not occur, as both sets of credentials match. If logged on to Windows as a local user account instead of a domain account, Credentials Manager would prompt for credentials when Connect to VM is clicked, as local accounts cannot be used on remote machines (and entering the credentials for User2 here would work).