How to manual merge HYPER-V Checkpoints

Hyper-v Checkpoints can be very helpful when it's time to do very important changes in a production environment. But in the same time can be very frustrating to deal with checkpoint issues in Virtual Machines.

Checkpoints configuration files corrupt , orphaned checkpoints or other issues that can face or even worse when Virtual Machine won't startup due to checkpoint issues.

Luckily HYPER-V has the options to merge avhdx files manual in the parent disk to resolve checkpoints problems as soon as possible.

Today i would like to describe step by step how can manual merge HYPER-V checkpoints.

Manual merge checkpoint you shouldn't be the first step if something goings wrong with the checkpoint in HYPER-V.

To be honest should be the last step after try other solutions to resolve the checkpoint issue.

Try first to create another Checkpoint and delete it. Then HYPER-V can take care of your checkpoints and probably resolve the issue.

Another step is to shutdown the VM and create a new VM from checkpoint. Export the VM and import again in HYPER-V without any checkpoint.

Depends of your Virtual Server you can try different solutions. These are some of the recommended and safe steps to use before manual merge the checkpoint that has issue.

If nothing can resolve the problem follow the steps to merge the checkpoint tin HYPER-V

Identify how many checkpoints created.

First of all you must determine if the checkpoint that use the Virtual Machine it's the first or has created more than one.

This is easy step and you can identify if open the folder which created the Checkpoints.

Open HYPER-V Manager
Right click in the Virtual Machine and select Settings.

Go down from the left side and select Checkpoint File Location.
From the right side see the path.

Open the path where located the checkpoint files and identify how many avhdx files has.
If it's only one means that one Checkpoint has created. I has 2 means that 2 checkpoint has created.

Find which checkpoint use the Virtual Machine.

The next step is to find which checkpoint use the Virtual Machine.

Also this is easy step.

Open HYPER-V Manager
Right click in the Virtual Machine and select Settings.

Click in Hard Drive from the left side.
Find the name of the Virtual Hard disk.
Open the path where located the checkpoint files and identify the disk that use Virtual Machine.

Merge Checkpoint from the Newest to Oldest

This steps is the final step and most important.

After have identify how many checkpoints has created it's time to merge manual the checkpoints.

With the checkpoints the normal is to merge from newest to oldest.

If we have more than one checkpoint must determine which checkpoint goes where because we don't want to merge wrong checkpoint and loose data.

Remember that we are in situation which we can't see the Checkpoints like in printscreen because it's corrupted but Virtual Machine use Checkpoint.

So to determine check Checkpoint goes were

Open HYPER-V Manager
From the right side click inspect Disk

Find the checkpoint file (avhdx) and click Open.
Check the Parent to identify where the checkpoint goes.
Here you can understand if this checkpoint it's the first or second or third base on how many checkpoints has.
If the Parent is the virtual disk then this is the first checkpoint.

If the Parent is another avhdx file find the related avhdx file and try to create in your mind a structure that HYPER-V Checkpoint has when hasn't issues