NY wrote:
I'll boot the PC into its BIOS tomorrow and make a note of any version
number. I'm almost certain that it is branded "Dell".
The User's Guide says (page 79): "Virtualization (Off default) Specifies
whether a virtual machine monitor (VMM) can utilize the additional hardware
capabilities provided by Intel Virtualization technology."
The manual is dated August 2007.
Looks like you PC has a Xeon processor. I didn't look at all of them to
check if all models and versions of the Xeon processor support the VT-x
virtualization mode. I looked only at the latest model and it does.
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us...rocessors.html
Supposedly that leads you to information on whether or not your
processor supports virtualization. Just enabling an option in BIOS
won't make a feature appear in the processor that it doesn't have.
Could be old versions of Xeons did not support VT-x and why the option
was disabled in the BIOS, by default.
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us...r-numbers.html
That shows how to interpret the processor's number to a family model
line; however, the only entry on that Microsoft page is for the mobile
versions of the Xeon, and you have a desktop.
You could use Piriform's Speccy to get info on the CPU. It doesn't list
the model number but gives the processor title and its code name which
might focus in on finding the specs for your particular CPU. For my
CPU, it reports "Virtualization: Supported, Disabled". I have a
salvaged Acer PC with almost no user configuration in its BIOS, so that
box was designed to not support VT-x no matter what CPU was put in the
mobo's CPU socket. I look again later but remember checking before in
the BIOS if there was a virtualization setting that I could enable but
didn't find one.
I also have the CPU-z tool. It says my CPU (Intel Core 2 Quad Q9400
Yorkfield) does support VT-x instructions. However, since there is no
BIOS support for it, I can't use it. This is an example of where I
noted that the BIOS may not yet support all the functionality of the
hardware. A later BIOS update may add that support. For me, there
haven't been any BIOS updates since 2009 for my PC and I'm on the latest
BIOS version that Acer ever released for this PC.
Since your BIOS does have a VT-x setting, next is to determine if your
processor supports it. Instead of delving into Microsoft online
documents trying to dig up data that says whether or not VT-x is
supported by your CPU, just use Speccy or CPU-z or both. Support must
be present in *both* the BIOS and the CPU. Also, both Speccy and CPU-z
will show motherboard/mainboard information, like the BIOS brand and
version (in case the POST screen disappears so fast that you cannot read
the line showing BIOS brand and version).
I use Avast free. Under its Troubleshooting settings is "Use hardware-
assisted virtualization" (and a sub-option "Use nested virtualization
where possible"). Presumably this is to help with isolating Avast's NG
component (deepscreen, sandbox, and safezone); however, the feature is
minimal in the freeware version and it's in the payware version where
you really get a sandbox for unknown processes to get tested, so I don't
know why the option appears in the freeware version.
https://malwaretips.com/threads/avas...40/post-281750
While my CPU supports virtualization instructions, my BIOS does not, so
this option is neutered in Avast. There have been bugs with this
feature in Avast where users (where both BIOS and CPU support
virtualization) reported that HAV (hardware-assisted virtualization) was
disabled when Avast had this option enabled, so disabling this option
allowed virtual machines to work again because Avast was no longer
interferring with HAV. I probably never ran into Avast's HAV
interference: its HAV option is enabled, my CPU supports HAV, but my
BIOS doesn't so I don't get to use HAV on my home PC.