Failed to power on virtual machine general access denied error (0x80070005)

As a Windows server administrator, you may experience issues where the virtual machine fails to start with error ‘General access denied error.’

With the Zesco power interruption issues, Zambia is constantly experiencing, your server may be brought down ungracefully at one point and the other.

Such power interruptions and shutdown of the server have more consequences to the operation of the machine as corruption to data and or complete loss of files necessary to run the Windows server.

This issue occurs when the permissions on the virtual hard disk (.vhdx) file or the snapshot file (.avhd) are incorrect.

An error occurred while attempting to start the selected virtual machine(s).
‘Escalante’ failed to start.
Synthetic SCSI Controller(Instance ID 
{83F8638B-8DCA-4152-9EDA-2CA8B33039B4}): Failed to Power on with Error ‘General access denied error’
Account does not have permission to open attachment ‘E:\Virtual Machines\Escalante\Virtual Hard Disks\Escalante.vhdx. Error: ‘General access denied error’
'Escalante' failed to start, (Virtual machine ID 9D0552D2-0DFB-40AF-A80F-B11FDD2A82BE)

However, a different error is returned when permissions on the Hyper-V virtual machine configuration file (.xml file) are incorrect

Unnamed VM’ failed to initialize. (Virtual machine 7E77503A-A26B-4BB5-9846-396F49A30141)
‘Unnamed VM’ failed to read or update the virtual machine configuration because access was denied: General access denied error (0×80070005). Check the security settings on the folder in which the virtual machine is stored. (Virtual machine 7E77503A-A26B-4BB5-9846-396F49A30141)

How To Resolve This Issue

To resolve this issue, add the Virtual Machine SID to the virtual hard disk (.vhdx) file or to the snapshot file (.avhd) by running a command.

To add the Virtual Machine SID to a .vhdx or .avhd file, follow these steps:

Note the Virtual Machine ID that is listed in the “‘General access denied error’ (0x80070005)” error message. This is accessed when you click on details in the Hyper-V Manager pop up window.

In my example, the Virtual Machine ID is 9D0552D2-0DFB-40AF-A80F-B11FDD2A82BE.

Open an elevated command prompt.

To give the Virtual Machine ID (SID) access to the .vhdx or .avhd file, type the following command, and then press Enter:

icacls  <Path of .vhdx or .avhd file>  /grant "NT VIRTUAL MACHINE\ <Virtual Machine ID as noted from the error details> ":(F) 

Replace the path of your virtual machine and VM ID:

icacls "E:\Virtual Machine\Escalante\Virtual Hard Disks\Escalante.vhdx" /grant "NT VIRTUAL MACHINE\9D0552D2-0DFB-40AF-A80F-B11FDD2A82BE":(F)

According to Microsoft, this issue applies to the following Microsoft Hyper-v errors on Windows OS:

Hyper-V Server 2008

Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2

Windows Server 2008 R2

Datacenter Windows Server 2008 R2

EnterpriseWindows Server 2008 R2

Standard Windows Server 2008

DatacenterWindows Server 2008

Enterprise Windows Server 2008 Standard