Hyper-V between Windows 10 & Windows 8.1 in a workgroup

My laptop’s running Windows 10, desktop’s running Windows 8.1. Since both have client Hyper-V I thought it would be cool to install Hyper-V manager on the laptop and use it to manage Hyper-V running on the desktop. Did that and came across the following error –

DOGBERT is the Windows 8.1 desktop. The error is from my Windows 10 laptop.

First I followed the steps in this blog post. Actually, I didn’t have to do much as the account I was using on the desktop was already in the local Administrators group and so I didn’t have to do anything in terms of COM (step 3) & WMI (step 4) permissions. But I did enable the firewall rules for the Windows Management Instruction (WMI) group (step 2).

Additionally, I noticed that the Windows Remote Management (WS-Man) service was not running on the desktop so I enabled that. For this I used the winrm command.

C:\WINDOWS\system32>winrm.cmd quickconfig
WinRM is not set up to receive requests on this machine.
The following changes must be made:

Start the WinRM service.
Set the WinRM service type to delayed auto start.

Make these changes [y/n]? y

WinRM has been updated to receive requests.

WinRM service type changed successfully.
WinRM service started.
WinRM is not set up to allow remote access to this machine for management.
The following changes must be made:

Create a WinRM listener on HTTP://* to accept WS-Man requests to any IP on this machine.
Enable the WinRM firewall exception.
Configure LocalAccountTokenFilterPolicy to grant administrative rights remotely to local users.

Make these changes [y/n]? y

WinRM has been updated for remote management.

Created a WinRM listener on HTTP://* to accept WS-Man requests to any IP on this machine.
WinRM firewall exception enabled.
Configured LocalAccountTokenFilterPolicy to grant administrative rights remotely to local users.

Then I had to enable the Windows Remote Management (WS-Man) service on the laptop and add the desktop as a trusted host. Remember the error message above? It said that either I must use HTTPS or add the remote computer to the TrustedHosts list. I add that thus (from my laptop):

C:\Windows\system32>winrm s winrm/config/client @{TrustedHosts="DOGBERT"}
Client
    NetworkDelayms = 5000
    URLPrefix = wsman
    AllowUnencrypted = false
    Auth
        Basic = true
        Digest = true
        Kerberos = true
        Negotiate = true
        Certificate = true
        CredSSP = true
    DefaultPorts
        HTTP = 5985
        HTTPS = 5986
    TrustedHosts = DOGBERT

Probably a good idea to see what your existing trusted hosts are before you run this command (so you can append to the list instead of removing existing entries). You can do that thus:

C:\Windows\system32>winrm g winrm/config/client
Client
    NetworkDelayms = 5000
    URLPrefix = wsman
    AllowUnencrypted = false
    Auth
        Basic = true
        Digest = true
        Kerberos = true
        Negotiate = true
        Certificate = true
        CredSSP = true
    DefaultPorts
        HTTP = 5985
        HTTPS = 5986
    TrustedHosts

After this Hyper-V manager from the laptop was able to connect to the desktop, but in the Virtual Machines section I had the following error:

Access denied. Unable to establish communication between ‘Hyper-V Server’ and ‘Hyper-V Manager’

The solution for that (thanks to this blog post) is to open “Component Services” on the laptop. Alternatively open a run window/ command prompt and type dcomcnfg.

In the windows that opens expand to Component Services > Computers > My Computer, right click and go to Properties, then the COM Security tab, and click “Edit Limits” under Access Permissions. Select the ANONYMOUS LOGIN username here and tick the box to allow Remote Access.

That’s it! After this Hyper-V on my laptop was able to talk to the desktop.