How to Create a Microsoft Hyper-V Checkpoint: A Step-by-Step Guide

Graphic illustrating Backup & Restore with snapshots, featuring a folder icon and a server graphic.

Hyper-V provides hardware virtualization, and this means each virtual machine runs on virtual hardware. In this article, you will learn how to create a Microsoft HyperV checkpoint. HyperV enables you to create virtual hard drives, virtual switches, and a number of other virtual devices. Virtualization allows you to run software that requires older versions of Windows or non-Windows operating systems, experiment with other operating systems, and make it very easy to create and remove different operating systems. Please see Enable HyperV on Windows: How to install Windows 11 on HyperV.

To test software on multiple operating systems using multiple virtual machines. With Hyper-V, you can run them all on a single desktop or laptop computer. These virtual machines can be exported and imported into any other Hyper-V system including Azure.

			
Please here is a YouTube video discussing these steps to ceate HyperV VMs checkpoint

Play

Checkpoint makes a snapshot of the virtual machine and virtual machine memory state. It is not a full backup of the Virtual Machine.

Refer to these guides for more information: How to create and delete a snapshot on VMware Workstation, how to extend a VM’s Hard Disk on VMware Workstation, how to create a HyperV checkpoint, and how to restore a VM to its previous state (restoring a checkpoint).

Steps to create a Microsoft HyperV checkpoint

To create a checkpoint, right-click on the VM or on the right pane under the Server settings, and click on Checkpoint.

Please see Hyper-V Server Core Mode: How to install free Hyper-V Server on a VMware workstation. Also, see Windows Screen Resolution: How to fix HyperV Virtual Machine. Here is how to fix the version of Windows is expired: How to upgrade Windows Server Evaluation to Full Version.

A screenshot of a virtual machine management interface displaying two running virtual machines with their memory sizes and a context menu highlighting the 'Checkpoint' option.

The status of the machine is displayed below as “Creating Checkpoint and the percentage will be displayed“.

Screenshot of a computer application displaying a progress bar for two tasks labeled 'Running'. One task is at 1% completion, labeled 'Creating Checkpoint (9%)' with a time of 1:03:02, while the other task is at 0% completion with a time of 0:58:26.

and under the Action pane (under the server settings, you will have the ability to cancel creating Checkpoint.

Menu options in a software interface with 'Cancel Creating Checkpoint' highlighted in yellow.

After the successful creation of the Checkpoint. The Virtual Machine Checkpoint window pops up stating that the Production checkpoint has been created as shown below.

Now you will be able to view the checkpoint created under the checkpoint window. Here is a similar guide “Virtual Machine Snapshot vs Backup“. Please see How to install and Configure Hyper-V on Windows Server on Windows Server 2019, and 2022 via the Server Manager, PowerShell or DISM.

I hope you found this blog post helpful. In this guide, you have learned how to create a Microsoft HyperV checkpoint. If you have any questions, please let me know in the comment session.