Hyper-V VM stuck in 'Starting', 'Stopping' or 'Saved-critical' state

Symptoms

• VM shows a transitional state (Starting/Stopping/Restoring/Paused) indefinitely.
• Cannot turn off, reset or connect to the VM from Hyper-V Manager.
• Other VMs on the host may be fine.

Fix it yourself

1. Check Hyper-V-VMMS and System event logs for related errors and note any recent host changes (updates, storage/network interruptions).
2. Identify the stuck VM's worker process: 'Get-Process | Where-Object {$_.Name -like "vmwp"}' and match the PID to the VM.
3. Forcefully end the stuck worker process: 'taskkill /PID /F' (this powers the VM off; unsaved data in the guest is lost).
4. Restart the Virtual Machine Management Service (VMMS).
5. Start the VM again and verify its state; check storage availability for its disk files first.
6. If VMs remain stuck after the service restart, restart the Hyper-V host.
7. For clustered VMs, also review cluster events (1069/1135/5120) that can leave VMs in critical states.

If that did not help

Attach Hyper-V-VMMS-Admin event log export, the VM's state and PID, cluster logs if clustered, and a procdump of the stuck vmwp/VMMS process if requested.