Error Using PowerShell Direct

If you've not heard of it, PowerShell Direct is a nifty new way that you can connect with virtual machines on a Windows 10 or Windows Server 2016 Hyper-V host. PowerShell Direct lets you enter PowerShell remoting sessions or invoke commands on a VM from the Hyper-V without requiring network connectivity.

To enter a PowerShell remoting session:

Enter-PSSession -VMName NameOfVM

I've played with this a bit before and it's pretty cool. I've never had any issues with it. However, today when working with some VMs provided for a course I'm working on I got longer version of this error when trying to connect:

Enter-PSSession : An error has occurred which Windows PowerShell cannot handle. A remote session might have ended.
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId :  CreateRemoteRunspaceForVMFailed,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.EnterPSSessionCommand

This same error message is provided if your authentication credentials fail. So, I reset the local administrator password on the VM, but no fix.

This was a generation 1 VM given to me. So, my first throught is that maybe its the generation of VM. Nope. I tested with other generation 1 and generation 2 VMs and all worked fine.

What it finally ended up being was the version of VM. The VM was built on a Windows Server 2012 R2 host. So, it was version 5 rather than version 7.1 for the VMs that I had created.

To view the version:

Get-VM | FT Name,Version

To update the version:

Update-VMVersion NameOfVM

After updating the VM to from version 5 to version 7.1 PowerShell Direct worked just like it is supposed to. This is worth noting because none of the articles about PowerShell Direct mention the version as a required.