Anyways, I decided to run a virtual machine on this sytem since it's the most powerful one in the house right now (yeah I know I'm behind the times). I prefer MS's Virtual PC 2007 because it's free. After fiddling around with the options I come by the Hardware virtualization option but it's disabled and forces me to use software virtualization. Now I thought the CPU is capable of doing hardware virtualization and thought it was a glitch in virtual PC.
Now I remember building my girlfriend's quad-core system last summer and remembered a bios setting to enable/disable it. I checked the BIOS settings for my notebook and there's nothing listed in there. All I get are options for the date/time, power management and boot options. After doing much research I came across the VMWare forums and landed on this thread.
Seems like Sony and I'm sure a few other OEMs out there disables this option for consumer based products thinking that no one would use it. I ended up following instructions on that thread and enabled VT/Vanderpool/virtualizaion by changing the value of a single register in my bios. Simply put, all you'd do is boot to dos, dump register values in a text file, changed a register in the dump then updated the registers back in the bios.
If anyone is interested here's what I did for my system:
CODE
Download symcmos.exe from http://www.filewatcher.com/b/ftp/ftp.supermicro.com/utility.0.0.html
Please remember to do this in a DOS (boot to DOS).
TO DUMP CURRENT REGISTERS:
symcmos -v2 -lcmos.sav
TO MODIFY REGISTERS:
Open cmos.sav in text a editor and change the register of your model from 0 to 1
SONY MODEL BIOS VERSION REGISTER
========== ============ ========
SZ1XP reg 0399
GN-SZ370 R0096N0 reg 0399
VGN-AR21S R200J6 reg 0195
VGN-AR51SU R1050J8 reg 027f
vgn-FE890 R0200J3 reg 0195
VGN-AR670 R1050J8 reg 027f
VGN-FZ21M reg 02CD
VGN-FZ180E R0050J7 reg 02D3
VGN-FZ11ZR R0050J7 reg 02D3
VGN-FZ280E R1120J7 reg 02CD**
TO UPDATE REGISTERS:
symcmos -v2 -ucmos.sav
Completey power down the system after updating the registers then boot back up.
HOPEFULLY the system starts and it's enabled.
Please remember to do this in a DOS (boot to DOS).
TO DUMP CURRENT REGISTERS:
symcmos -v2 -lcmos.sav
TO MODIFY REGISTERS:
Open cmos.sav in text a editor and change the register of your model from 0 to 1
SONY MODEL BIOS VERSION REGISTER
========== ============ ========
SZ1XP reg 0399
GN-SZ370 R0096N0 reg 0399
VGN-AR21S R200J6 reg 0195
VGN-AR51SU R1050J8 reg 027f
vgn-FE890 R0200J3 reg 0195
VGN-AR670 R1050J8 reg 027f
VGN-FZ21M reg 02CD
VGN-FZ180E R0050J7 reg 02D3
VGN-FZ11ZR R0050J7 reg 02D3
VGN-FZ280E R1120J7 reg 02CD**
TO UPDATE REGISTERS:
symcmos -v2 -ucmos.sav
Completey power down the system after updating the registers then boot back up.
HOPEFULLY the system starts and it's enabled.
** I guessed this register based on the FZ12M model on that list because it was very similar to my system and took a chance at temporarily bricking the laptop (resetting the cmos can be done by removing the cmos battery). Needless to say, I'm now happy with the hardware virtualization on my system. I hope this helps other people in a similar situation that I was in.
Keep in mind that the tool that was used is for phoenix bioses and your mileage may vary with different models and manufacturers. Good luck!
This post has been edited by warwagon: Jul 23 2009, 14:17
