Why is the video limited to 16 bits per pixel for my Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 guest on Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V?

Solution Verified - Updated -

Environment

Microsoft Windows 2008 R2 Hyper-V virtual machine
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 guest

Issue

Why is the video limited to 16 bits per pixel for my Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 guest on Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V?

Resolution

The video is limited to 16-bit color in virtual machines running on Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008 R2 when the default Microsoft Synthetic Video hardware is used. Please see the following Microsoft document for more information:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee405267(WS.10).aspx

As an alternative, you can disable the Microsoft Synthetic Video support and use the VESA video driver to achieve 24 bits per pixel video support on your Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 guest. To do this, you must blacklist the hyperv_fb driver and reboot the virtual machine:

As root, run the command

echo "blacklist hyperv_fb" >> /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

then reboot the machine.

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