VT-x/AMD-V hardware acceleration is not available on Windows 10 Professional

By M_Lyons10
in Microsoft (Windows)

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M_Lyons10

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Hi everyone.  I have VirtualBox installed on my machine running the 64bit preview of Windows 10.  This was working perfectly fine until recently I upgraded to Windows 10 Pro.  Now, I gett a message that VT-x/AMD-V hardware acceleration is not available on the machine whenever I try to open my Windows 10 Virtual Machine.

 

I also cannot install the Android emulator for Visual Studio.  Though I am not provided any useful error message, I assume this is the issue there as well.

 

I checked in the BIOS, and it is enabled.  Does anyone have any other suggestions or ideas to resolve this?  I would like to get both of the above issues resolved and would have expected the Pro version of Windows 10 would be more feature rich, not less.

 

Thanks for your help.

Mentor

Clirion

Posted
Posted

Check and see if Hyper-V is installed.  If it is, remove it.

 

Verify latest version of Virtual Box.  I know there were problems with Pre-View, but I do not remember much of an uproar after it went to release a year ago.

 

Hyper-V jumped in my brain first.  :)

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Jim K Global Moderator

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Dumb question ...

 

Does it show on CPU-Z?

Capture.JPG

 

Edit:  what @Clirionsaid. :)  Control Panel > Programs > "Turn Windows features on or off" > Uncheck Hyper-V if checked

...or you can just type "Windows fea..." and it should pop up in the start menu.

 

Grand Master

M_Lyons10

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Thank you everyone for your responses.  I do have Hyper-V installed and running.  I didn't realize this was an issue, is it a common conflict?
 

I will try that now and will post back.  Thank you for your help.

Grand Master

adrynalyne

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2 minutes ago, M_Lyons10 said:

Thank you everyone for your responses.  I do have Hyper-V installed and running.  I didn't realize this was an issue, is it a common conflict?
 

I will try that now and will post back.  Thank you for your help.

Yes very common. Hyper visors are greedy and don't like to share so they conflict. 

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Jim K Global Moderator

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23 minutes ago, adrynalyne said:

Yes very common. Hyper visors are greedy and don't like to share so they conflict. 

pretty much this.  Hyper-V locks exclusively the virtualization of the CPU and doesn't share.  Hyper-V is considered a Type 1 (i.e. native) hypervisor and takes control of VT-x (so VB doesn't see it)... while VB is a Type 2 (hosted) and relinquishes VT-x when it's done.  I believe you can still run 32-bit guests in VB without needing VT-x (maybe someone can confirm). 

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+LogicalApex MVC

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3 hours ago, M_Lyons10 said:

Thank you everyone for your responses.  I do have Hyper-V installed and running.  I didn't realize this was an issue, is it a common conflict?
 

I will try that now and will post back.  Thank you for your help.

This is expected... For a bit more technical detail... Hyper-V is a Type-1 Hypervisor (meaning it runs against the bare metal and everything else runs on top of it). So if you're using Windows with Hyper-V enabled the Windows OS you're booting on the host is actually a VM running on top of Hyper-V! Hyper-V doesn't currently support nested hypervisors (meaning it can't virtualize VT-x) so it won't allow you to run another type-1 hypervisor in a VM. This is coming in Windows Server 2016 if memory serves me so you will end up having the ability to leave Hyper-V on and install other hypervisors in the future...

Grand Master

M_Lyons10

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Thank you everyone for your help, and for the very informative explanations.  I didn't realize any of that...

Disabling Hyper-V worked for getting VirtualBox running again (Yay!)

 

It did not get the Visual Studio Android Emulator to install, but I'm not all that worried about that at this point.  Interestingly though, attempting to install the Android Emulator re-enabled Hyper-V!  So for anyone that runs into that sort of issue, that's a bit of a vicious circle...  LOL  As I intend to begin Android development through Xamarin, I'll have to find another solution.  Even with Hyper-V the installer fails (Without much useful information), so that probably isn't even the issue.  In fact, I've had problems with a lot of Visual Studio updates / addons, so hopefully they get that improved with the next release.

 

Thanks again everyone for all of your help, I really appreciate it!

  • 1 month later...
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PGHammer

Posted
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On 6/2/2016 at 0:41 PM, M_Lyons10 said:

Thank you everyone for your responses.  I do have Hyper-V installed and running.  I didn't realize this was an issue, is it a common conflict?
 

I will try that now and will post back.  Thank you for your help.

BIG conflict - as Hyper-V is a type 1 hypervisor, it will stomp on any other hypervisor (including VT-x and AMD-V).  While AMD-V and VT-x have niche usages (such as OS X virtualization), you can generally use Hyper-V for anything you can use VT-x or AMD-V for (Android device virtualization, for example).  The Visual Studio Emulator for Android (Visual Studio 2013 or later) leverages Hyper-V (not VT-x or AMD-V) - otherwise, it functions similarly to Genymotion (which it replaced in my own case) which is why migrating to it FROM Genymotion was - to put it simply - "quack soup".

 

Which version of VS are you working with?  I use the current version of Visual Studio Community with all the updates to date (cost - none) and do a maximum install.  I've never had a problem with the web installer, either (either via wired OR wireless connections).

Grand Master

PGHammer

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Posted
On 6/2/2016 at 4:40 PM, LogicalApex said:

This is expected... For a bit more technical detail... Hyper-V is a Type-1 Hypervisor (meaning it runs against the bare metal and everything else runs on top of it). So if you're using Windows with Hyper-V enabled the Windows OS you're booting on the host is actually a VM running on top of Hyper-V! Hyper-V doesn't currently support nested hypervisors (meaning it can't virtualize VT-x) so it won't allow you to run another type-1 hypervisor in a VM. This is coming in Windows Server 2016 if memory serves me so you will end up having the ability to leave Hyper-V on and install other hypervisors in the future...

It's those niches, Logical  - that is where Oracle and vmWare are living right now.  However, other than that, I actually find Hyper-V preferable to either VirtualBox or vmWare - and, oddly enough, especially for Android device virtualization.

Grand Master

adrynalyne

Posted
Posted
On 6/3/2016 at 7:46 AM, M_Lyons10 said:

Thank you everyone for your help, and for the very informative explanations.  I didn't realize any of that...

Disabling Hyper-V worked for getting VirtualBox running again (Yay!)

 

It did not get the Visual Studio Android Emulator to install, but I'm not all that worried about that at this point.  Interestingly though, attempting to install the Android Emulator re-enabled Hyper-V!  So for anyone that runs into that sort of issue, that's a bit of a vicious circle...  LOL  As I intend to begin Android development through Xamarin, I'll have to find another solution.  Even with Hyper-V the installer fails (Without much useful information), so that probably isn't even the issue.  In fact, I've had problems with a lot of Visual Studio updates / addons, so hopefully they get that improved with the next release.

 

Thanks again everyone for all of your help, I really appreciate it!

Ironically enough, the Visual Studio Android emulator requires Hyper-V ;)

 

Grand Master

PGHammer

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7 minutes ago, adrynalyne said:

Ironically enough, the Visual Studio Android emulator requires Hyper-V ;)

 

Kinda makes sense, though - since Hyper-V is standard on the Windows side of things (as has, in fact, been the case since Windows 8/Windows Server 2008R2).

Hyper-V is standard in Windows 10 Pro and Enterprise (and is not an option in either Home or Core); that is no different than Windows 8, either.

Where things got different is below the Core i-series on the Intel side of the street (where CeleronG and PentiumG gained support for Hyper-V, as an upgrade from the VT-x support of the Celeron DC and Pentium DC CPUs they succeeded - yes; this specifically applies to the G3220 and G3258 - two of the CPUs at the floor end of Haswell).  That also explains why G3258 in my own case (the biggest driver for virtualization is development - and mobile development in particular); between G3258, the included Hyper-V in Windows 8.x/10, and Visual Studio Community, you have the entirety of mobile development (except iOS development) at your beck for diddly.

One thing that VirtualBox does (that Hyper-V doesn't do) is auto-configure networking - you have to configure that yourself.  Fortunately, it's not that hard - Hyper-V uses virtual switches - which it DOES initially configure for you.  Each virtual switch corresponds to an existing network interface - therefore, multiple network interfaces equals multiple virtual switches; Baby Pavilion, for example, has two virtual switches; one each for wired Ethernet and wireless.

 

One reason I was rather anxious to replace Genymotion for Android VMs was due to the requirement of HAXM - while HAXM is free, it doesn't boost Android VM performance as much as I'd like.  The Visual Studio Emulator for Android does not use - or require - HAXM; even better, it's faster than Genymotion, and no harder to configure in terms of Android VMs, either.  No HAXM, faster VM performance, and the cost is STILL nada.  (No learning curve either, outside of Hyper-V itself.)

 

Grand Master

M_Lyons10

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  • Author
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Thank you for the additional information and explanation.  This was all very interesting to me, and something I knew virtually nothing about.

I have found that VirtualBox (In my experience) runs smoother, with less of a hit on the Host OS, and with more accurate full screen features.  So, while I have nothing against Hyper-V, I do hope that they make improvements in the future to allow VirtualBox like LogicalApex had mentioned above.

Enthusiast

barnacles

Posted
Posted

I had the same issue when I installed Visual Studio with Windows Phone emulators. Turning Hyper-V off allowed me to have VT-X/AMD-V back(and the ability to install 64 bit guest OS in VirtualBox), but the Windows Phone emulators will stop working. Just something to keep in mind if you are into Windows Phone development.

  • 4 months later...
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PGHammer

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Posted
On 7/18/2016 at 8:11 AM, barnacles said:

I had the same issue when I installed Visual Studio with Windows Phone emulators. Turning Hyper-V off allowed me to have VT-X/AMD-V back(and the ability to install 64 bit guest OS in VirtualBox), but the Windows Phone emulators will stop working. Just something to keep in mind if you are into Windows Phone development.

Hyper-V supports all the guest OSes that VirtualBox does except two (no support for Apple OSes or OS/2-based OSes, such as eComStation) and supports Windows Phone/Mobile emulation - hence my referring to niches in terms of VB and vmWare.

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