WS 2012 Standard - Unable to connect to Virtual Disk Service

Hi folks,

I am having an issue with a 2012 VM whereby the Virtual Disk Service keeps stopping and failing to properly restart.

It works again after a reboot but then after an indeterminate amount of time, the service stops and doesn't restart. When we launch disk management, we get the 'Unable to connect to Virtual Disk Service' message at the bottom of the window - no further pop-up dialogues to say there's a problem.

When I go to Services, the Virtual Disk Service is stopped. When I start it, it shows as running. However, when I then re-launch disk management, I get the same message as above and once again, the service has stopped.

I have thus far been unable to find a permanent fix to this problem. I have tried the hotfix detailed at https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/virtual-disk-service-or-applications-that-use-the-virtual-disk-service-crash-or-freeze-in-windows-server-2012-53bfc3b4-011d-f64f-c927-b4222ab025a8 but this has not fixed the issue.

Setting the service startup to both manual & automatic has not made any difference.

Any further tips would be gratefully received.

Make sure the startup type for the service is set to automatic, rather than manual.

As for why, you might want to turn on debug logging to determine why this keeps happening. I see numerous threads on this issue over the years, but no root cause.

Have you checked which dependencies that service has to see if those services are stable/the latest version?

You're running an awfully old, outdated and insecure OS version.