How do i enable Virtualization (VT) on Windows 7?

Question

How would I enable vt for Windows 7?

Thanks

Solution 1

Virtualization is still possible with a product such as VirtualBox. However, your options are limited, since this option is required to emulate other instruction sets than the one in your CPU.

These are the limitations:

1. It may work or not, and unexpectedly. For Windows, do not use any version later than Windows 7, as Windows 8+ requires it.
2. 32-bit works on 32-bit and 64-bit works on 64 and you cannot mix them.
3. You may use a maximum of 2 or 3 GB of RAM.
4. Performance is not very fast and not very good.
5. Hardware support might be a problem.

In short, it is not recommended to perform hardware virtualization on your machines that do not support VT-X, because it is more painful than helpful.

Solution 2

VT requires processors that support the feature.

If your processor does not support the feature you will not be able to enable virtualization.

As Mokubai has pointed out, your processor (Pentium T4500) does NOT support virtualization and so you will not be able to enable virtualization, no matter what OS you use.

Comments

[Mokubai]

You don't. Your processor doesn't support vt-x. ark.intel.com/products/42925/…

[Aulis Ronkainen]

@Mokubai Yes, you are correct. BUT technically it possible to run a "virtual machine" without VT-X support. Take a look at this question: superuser.com/questions/726320/…. I wouldn't recommend it though.

[Admin]

And in any case VT isn't enabled "in the OS". It is enable/disabled in BIOS/UEFI.