CPU-Z does not recognize the support of VT-x in Windows 10?

Question

My CPU does support VT-x. In Windows 7 before when I run CPU-Z it showed the VT-x in the Instructions list. But now after I upgraded to Windows 10, when I run CPU-Z it does not show VT-x in the instructions list:

However the Task Manager in Windows 10 has a new feature showing one info called Virtualization, it's shown as Enabled but I'm not sure if it's related to VT-x:

So I doubt that CPU-Z just simply does not work correctly in Windows 10. Currently my laptop is full of working space, so I'll try checking out the BIOS to see if it's enabled. Now I need some advice from you especially who has experienced this issue with Windows 10. Thank you!

Solution 1

There's nothing surprising about this. Windows 10 is using the virtualization feature of the CPU, as it says it is. CPU-Z is therefore running on a virtual CPU which does not itself support virtualization.

Before, your OS wasn't using the virtualization feature of the CPU. So that left it available for programs like CPU-Z to detect and use.

Unless nested virtualization is supported (which it isn't in your case) only one program can use the virtualization features. Windows 10 is expected to support nested virtualization shortly, and the preview release as of mid-October already does.

Solution 2

Just ran this on my box at home and I can confirm the latest version of CPU-Z directly from the website works correctly on Windows 10.

It detected that my CPU supported VT-x and listed it in the instructions section. Without checking if you have VT-x enabled in the BIOS, everything is probably just guessing.

Comments

[Hopeless]

so does that mean some Virtual machine like Virtual Box cannot run correctly in Windows 10 with Virtualization enabled? So can I turn off Windows 10 Virtualization without losing some benefit (I guess it should have something good for the Virtualization being enabled by default in Windows 10)? In fact what leaded me to this question was my Virtual Box does not run correctly, more specifically the connection between host and guest is totally disconnected, I've tried joining them in a LAN (as I did before in Windows 7) but without success.

[Hopeless]

it's quite strange that my CPU-Z is also a totally newly downloaded (just some minutes before I asked this question). So according to David Schwartz, maybe your Windows 10 supports nested virtualization? I doubt that your version of Windows 10 is newer than mine.

[David Schwartz]

That's right. Until Windows 10 supports nested virtualization, if you enable virtualization in Windows 10, you cannot use it in another program like Virtualbox.

[Ramhound]

It isn't that Windows 10 virtualization needs to support nested virtualization it just means the virtualization software needs to support it. As you point out Hyper-V in Windows version 1511 now supports nested visualization VirtualBox does not. VMWare does indeed support it.

[Ramhound]

@Hopeless - You are running Windows 10 build 10586.3, Version 1511, i.e. Threshold 2 aka Fall Update?

[Hopeless]

the build version is 10240, for other info (as in your comment), I'm not sure.

[David Schwartz]

@Ramhound I'm not 100% clear on this, but my understanding is that whether Hyper-V or VirtualBox support nested virtualization affects whether VMs inside them can use virtualization, not whether they can use the host's virtualization.

[Ramhound]

@DavidSchwartz - Indeed. I was just pointing out that the version of Hyper-V that exists within Windows 10 version 1511 does support it. So the nest virtualization in that regard only works if the author was using Hypver-v virtual machines instead of using VirtualBox

[Paul Stelian]

@Hopeless you have a very old version (or had); 10240 was called Threshold 1, was released July 2015. The current version is 14393, released August 2016. For your last comment, you had the November 2015 version which was still a bit new.