Windows Server 2019 Copy Fix¶

Abstract

In December of 2025, Microsoft issued an update to PowerShell that introduced a breaking change to the behavior of the Invoke-WebRequest cmdlet. This change impacts copied environments that contain a Windows Server 2019 VM. This article describes the symptoms of the issue and outlines the solution for Windows Server 2019 environments within the Virginia Cyber Range.

Symptoms¶

This impacts environments that contain Windows Server 2019, released as part of our Fall refresh for 2025, which include:

Windows Server 2019 (2025.7)
Kali with Windows Server (2025.7)
OPNsense Firewall with Multiple Networks - Kali, Ubuntu, and Windows 2019 servers (2025.4)

If an instructor updates the Windows OS in one of these exercise environments and then creates a copy, the copied environment will fail to start and cause exercise to go into an error state.

Important

Please note that this problem only affects copied environments.

Solution¶

This issue has been addressed in our upcoming 2026.7 releases. If a copy of an updated OS is needed for existing environments, a manual change of the affected scripts is recommended instead.

To prevent the issue, please run the following command in the Windows Server 2019 VM before copying the environment:

$p='C:\ProgramData\CyberRange\scripts\SetupComplete\configure-instance.ps1';(gc $p) | % { if($_ -match '169\.254\.169\.254/.+instance-id' -and $_ -notmatch 'UseBasicParsing'){$_ -replace 'Invoke-WebRequest','Invoke-WebRequest -UseBasicParsing'} else {$_} } | sc $p

Have a Question? Contact Support¶

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