Article ID: 2505030 - Last Review: February 16, 2011 - Revision: 1.0

A RemoteFX VM does not start, and you receive the error "Microsoft Synthetic 3D Display Controller: Failed to Power on" when you try to add the RemoteFX 3D Video adapter from Hyper-V settings

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SYMPTOMS

After you add the RemoteFX 3D Video adapter from Hyper-V settings, a RemoteFX virtual machine will not start, and you receive the following error message:

Microsoft Synthetic 3D Display Controller: Failed to Power on with Error 'Unspecified Error'

Additionally, the following event is logged in the Event Viewer of the server when this issue occurs:

Log Name:      RemoteDesktopServices-RemoteFX-SessionManager-Admin
Source:        Microsoft-Windows-RemoteDesktopServices-RemoteFX-SessionManager
Date:          Date_TimeEvent ID:      11
Task Category: None
Level:         Critical
Keywords:
User:          SYSTEM
Computer:

Description:
Virtual machines configured with a 3D video adapter can only run on systems that have a SLAT capable CPU.

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CAUSE

This issue occurs when you try to start a RemoteFX virtual machine on a Hyper-V server that does not have a Second-Level Address Translation (SLAT)-enabled processor.

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RESOLUTION

The processor in the RemoteFX server must support SLAT. In virtualization scenarios, hardware-based SLAT support improves performance. On Intel processors, these are known as Extended Page Tables (EPT), and on AMD processors, they are called Nested Page Tables (NPT).

For information about how to identify other hardware requirements for RemoteFX, refer to the following Microsoft TechNet article:

Hardware Considerations for RemoteFX (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff817602(WS.10).aspx)

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