As with anything you should be backing up your Hyper-V machines.  I think that just goes without saying.  Backing up Hyper-V has gotten easier with the addition of VSS and Windows Server Backup (WSB).  WSB is a new feature in Windows Server 2008 that replaces the old NTBackup from days gone by.  It is not installed by default but can be easily added with the Add Features wizard in Server Manager.  Once installed there is one last setting you must configure before backing up the Hyper-V virtual machines.

While Hyper-V does support VSS backups, it is not enabled by default.  I am not sure why but you need to set a few registry settings to get WSB to recognize the Hyper-V VSS writer.  You can enable this with the following two registry settings.

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In a recent article I wrote about the Standard User Analyzer, one of the tools available to mitigate app compat issues with UAC.  Some applications require a little more work to get them working and for these situations you can use the Compatibility Administrator which part of the Application Compatibility Toolkit 5.0.  Again it is a pretty straight-forward tool to use once you have collected the required information.  Now before you begin you need to use tools like Process Monitor to determine what is preventing the application from loading and operating properly.  Once you have done that you can use the Compatibility Administrator to create the shim.

Before you get started I’d suggest looking at the existing database within the tool as there are already a large number of shims created and more being added.  With that in mind launch the tool and click File –> New Database.
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