In one embodiment, a Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCIe) Input/Output (I/O) device operable to perform Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV) is provided. The device comprises hardware registers implementing a PCIe configuration space for the device, and firmware implementing one or more SR-IOV virtual functions that each provide a virtual machine access to a subset of PCIe configuration space hardware registers for the device. The device further includes a hardware recovery register directly accessible by each of the virtual machines, and a control unit. The control unit is operable to detect a firmware fault at the I/O device and to update the hardware recovery register with information describing the firmware fault.