An error occurred while attempting to start the selected virtual machine(s) The security ID structure is invalid (0x80070539)

So I was recently working with some really old Virtual machines in a development environment that came across from another organisation. One particular virtual machine gave me an error message when I tried to start it up “An error occurred while attempting to start the selected virtual machine(s)… The security ID structure is invalid (0x80070539)”.  When this happens, Hyper-V basically doesn’t have permission to start the selected virtual machines under the user.  A quick administrative PowerShell cmdlet will grant me or a user permission and allow us to start the VM up;

Grant-VMConnectAccess -VMName "Name of VM not starting" -UserName 
"DOMAIN\Username of current user"

Changing -VMName to match the virtual machine giving you the error and a DOMAIN\Username of the user you are now logged on as.

Once you issue this command the virtual machine will start without any issues.

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