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I've got a system with a Core i3 6100 that I want to use to virtualize a low-use OS. Basically it'll have Fiddler (because I don't want that root cert on the actual OS of any machine) and VS 2013 Pro (for TFS access) installed.

When I went to create a new VM in VirtualBox, only 32-bit operating systems are supported. I already had the virtual disk image created, so I copied it to the system and tried to boot it anyway. Of course in the VM settings, the Acceleration tab is grayed out and trying to boot the image results in an error that VT-x isn't found.

So I did a little digging. According to the ARK VT-x (and VT-d!) is supported on the Core i3-6100. According to the BIOS settings for the motherboard (MSI Z170A Krait Gaming) everything for Virtualization is enabled. There's also a read-only "CPU Technology" page that says YES next to Intel Virtualization. The machine is running Windows 10 Pro x64.

CPU-Z doesn't show VT-x. The Intel Processor Identification Utility says there's no VT-x. And of course VirtualBox. I don't ever recall trying to virtualize anything on this system before, so I don't know that it's ever been tested before today. If anybody has any ideas, I'm all ears.

From the ARK:

http://ark.intel.com/products/90729/Int ... e-3_70-GHz

-Advanced Technologies
Intel® Turbo Boost Technology ‡ No
Intel® vPro Technology ‡ No
Intel® Hyper-Threading Technology ‡ Yes
Intel® Virtualization Technology (VT-x) ‡ Yes
Intel® Virtualization Technology for Directed I/O (VT-d) ‡ Yes
Intel® VT-x with Extended Page Tables (EPT) ‡ Yes

‡ This feature may not be available on all computing systems. Please check with the system vendor to determine if your system delivers this feature, or reference the system specifications (motherboard, processor, chipset, power supply, HDD, graphics controller, memory, BIOS, drivers, virtual machine monitor-VMM, platform software, and/or operating system) for feature compatibility. Functionality, performance, and other benefits of this feature may vary depending on system configuration.

I am guessing it is a motherboard issue; Which BIOS version do you have? May need to update it.
Also, the board may not support all the Virtualization tech; I see no mention in the manual / bios of Intel® VT-x with Extended Page Table.

Checking the manual, it says the following:

▶CPU Features
Press <Enter> to enter the sub-menu.
▶Intel Virtualization Tech [Enabled]
Enables or disables Intel Virtualization technology.
[Enabled] Enables Intel Virtualization technology and allows a platform to run
multiple operating systems in independent partitions. The system
can function as multiple systems virtually.
[Disabled] Disables this function.
▶Intel VT-D Tech [Disabled]
Enables or disables Intel VT-D (Intel Virtualization for Directed I/O) technology.
▶Hardware Prefetcher [Enabled]
Enables or disables the hardware prefetcher (MLC Streamer prefetcher).
[Enabled] Allows the hardware prefetcher to automatically pre-fetch data
and instructions into L2 cache from memory for tuning the CPU
performance.
[Disabled] Disables the hardware prefetcher.

I haven't played with a VM in a while, but shouldn't it run no matter what? It just wont have any hardware optimization

Do you have Hyper-V enabled? If you do, that's your culprit: it's a bad neighbor and only lets VirtualBox run 32-bit guests, /and/ it won't let VMware run at all. If you did a complete install of VS2013 on this machine then Hyper-V gets pulled in so you can develop WinPhone apps IIRC.

Yup, HyperV & VirtualBox don't work together well.
To disable Hyper-V in order to use VirtualBox, open a command prompt as administrator and run the command:
bcdedit /set hypervisorlaunchtype off

You’ll need to reboot, but then you’ll be all set to run VirtualBox. To turn Hyper-V back on, run:
bcdedit /set hypervisorlaunchtype auto

and then reboot.

Got this tip from hanselman blog.

Ah, that was it. I didn't even think about Hyper V. I won't ever use the Windows Phone emulators (detailed in the "WP is dead" article on the front page) so I turned off Hyper V. It also explains the slower-than-expected performance with the Android emulator that uses HAXM.

Thank you all. I knew TR would come through.

I'm wondering if this will still be an issue with the Windows 10 Anniversary Update. They've made some changes to Hyper-V that exposes the virtualization features of the CPU through to a VM, so you could essentially have a VM running on a VM. I don't know if that means only Hyper-V on Hyper-V, though.

curtisb wrote:

I'm wondering if this will still be an issue with the Windows 10 Anniversary Update. They've made some changes to Hyper-V that exposes the virtualization features of the CPU through to a VM, so you could essentially have a VM running on a VM. I don't know if that means only Hyper-V on Hyper-V, though.

The blog announcement had a a bold-ed part saying you needed same version of Hyper-V for the guest OS. Other hyper-visors would not work. Checked, not different now.

Nested Virtualization

Windows Insiders build (Windows Server 2016, Nano Server or Windows 10) running Build 10565 or later.
Both hypervisors (parent and child) must be running identical Windows builds (10565 or later).
4 GB RAM available minimum.
An Intel processor with the Intel VT-x technology.

I figured that was the case for nested virtualization, but it could have the added side affect of making other virtualization techs work (better) on the host OS, too. Technically the host OS is a VOSE since the hypervisor is between it and the hardware. The upcoming update will expose the virtualization features of the hardware to guest OS'es, so I assume that means the host OS is also getting greater exposure to those features. It would likely require some updates to VirtualBox et al.

I don't think it's likely to change, at least not on consumer hardware.

It was my experience VMware Workstation 12 doesn't even let you start a VM until HyperV has been uninstalled (I hadn't heard of the bcedit tricks, thanks a bunch for those!!). Vmware Workstation basically threw a dialog box telling me to make HyperV disappear or to forget using Vmware.

That's because Hyper-V's a bad neighbor. It loads during boot and grabs control of the CPU's virtualization capabilities, so there's nothing for VMware to use even if you're not running a Hyper-V virtual machine.

bthylafh wrote:

That's because Hyper-V's a bad neighbor. It loads during boot and grabs control of the CPU's virtualization capabilities, so there's nothing for VMware to use even if you're not running a Hyper-V virtual machine.

Agreed, and I don't understand why Microsoft does this. Everyone else (well, Oracle, VMWare, and Intel's HAXM for Android virtualization) can make polite, fast virtualization hosts that don't cause other hosts to freak out. If I'm not actually running a Hyper-V machine, there's no reason it can't just sit in the background disabled. I'm fine with shutting down VirtualBox for a bit in the event I actually need something Hyper-V provides.

Because Hyper-V is more akin to ESXi than it is to VirtualBox, VMware Workstation, or the others that sit on top of the OS. The Hyper-V hypervisor sits between the OS and the hardware. You technically don't need the host OS when running it, it's just there to provide local management. ESXi does this through a web interface or vSphere. As I mentioned above, your "host OS' is actually a Virtual Operating System Environment (VOSE) itself, but it gets much more exposure to the underlying hardware than other VOSE's (aka VM's) running on a given box.

So essentially, if you try to run VirtualBox, VMware Workstation, etc. on top of Hyper-V, you're trying to run a hypervisor on a hypervisor. Hence my question about the changes coming with Windows 10 Anniversary Update and Windows Server 2016. Conversely, if you're running VirtualBox, VMware Workstation, etc. on a Windows/OS X/Linux install, you're running them side-by-side and not on top of each other. I suspect that if you try to run VirtualBox inside of a VMware Workstation VM you'll end up with the same 32-bit limitation (unless those hypervisors are already exposing the CPU virtualization features through).

I think you could reasonably argue that there's no need for any of that in a desktop OS that basically uses it to emulate a phone.

Probably not...

A bit of a tangent, but you might want to check out BrowserStack as well. I don't know how well it would integrate into your development cycle, but it's useful for testing multiple platforms/devices if you don't have a physical device on hand.

derFunkenstein wrote:

I think you could reasonably argue that there's no need for any of that in a desktop OS that basically uses it to emulate a phone.

Probably not...depends on your priorities, I guess.

derFunkenstein wrote:

and I don't understand why Microsoft does this.

On my Linux boxes, I have to disable/stop all VirtualBox VMs when I'm playing with Android development to allow/run the qemu-based virtual machines for various Android-slabs. Annoying...(can't they all be friends (they could with some effort)).

Wait - Hyper-V is shipping enabled out of the box on Win 10 installations? I didn't know that, seemed to always be relegated to Win Server in the past. Is this only true for 10 Pro?

I haven't run across an install yet where it's enabled out of the box. Did someone say that above and I missed it? It's not enabled out of the box on Windows Server either.



The feature has been there since Windows 8/8.1, but you have to manually enable it if you want/need to use it.

curtisb wrote:

I haven't run across an install yet where it's enabled out of the box. Did someone say that above and I missed it? It's not enabled out of the box on Windows Server either.



The feature has been there since Windows 8/8.1, but you have to manually enable it if you want/need to use it.

I just assumed it was since I didn't use 8 long enough to even realize it was there, also I figured no one would use a consumer O.S.' built-in virtualization option if it wasn't already enabled. Not that Hyper-V is bad, but VMWare and Oracle's solutions are just better in my experience.

derFunk was using Visual Studio with phone emulation, which probably enables it during installation.

Indeed, sorry if I wasn't clear. I turned on the option for cross-platform mobile development when I installed and didn't realize the consequences.

Flying Fox wrote:

derFunk was using Visual Studio with phone emulation, which probably enables it during installation.

Ah, good catch.

derFunkenstein wrote:

Indeed, sorry if I wasn't clear. I turned on the option for cross-platform mobile development when I installed and didn't realize the consequences.

No worries, I just haven't used VS in over a decade so I didn't even think of that possibility!