Windows 10 Enterprise in Hyper-V

It's October 1. Windows 10 Technical Preview is out. I'm an IT Manager. Guess what I'm doing today?

After downloading the ISO for Windows 10 Enterprise, I figured I'd try it in Hyper-V in Windows 8.1 first, just to get a feel for how it works. Since it's a newer version of Windows, I figured it'd work as a Generation 2 virtual machine. So, I followed the wizard - gave it a name...

Chose a generation...

Gave it a pile of RAM because, hey, why not...

Connected it to none of your business, thank you very much...

Created a default virtual disk...

Set it to install an operating system from my newly downloaded ISO...

And then tried to boot it, only to get this charming error message:

So, what happened? Well, it turns out the key is in how Microsoft builds their Windows installation ISOs and how Hyper-V's implementation points and laughs at them. For a lovely overview of the details, click here.

The solution? Well, there are a couple of options:

• Create a Generation 1 VM and install the ISO on that. This is what I ultimately went with.
• Edit the ISO to somehow overcome Hyper-V's EFI implementation.

Since my attempts at mounting the ISO so that I could edit it led to this wonderful message:

I decided I was better off hitting the "easy" button and going with the way that led to a working VM within this lifetime.