Running the new Intel emulator for Android

Question

Lately Google and Intel have published a new way to run the emulator, which should work much better than the previous version (which has emulated ARM CPU). Here are some links about it: this and this.

However, after installing the new components and creating a new emulator configuration as instructed, I get an error and I also can't see any improvements. I've tried both API 10 and API 15, and with GPU enabled and disabled. None of those configurations helped. I've also tried it on two different computers and didn't get any boost (and got the same errors).

It seems that on the posts I've read about it, nobody had any problems with it and all report a much faster emulator.

The error it shows is:

emulator: Failed to open the HAX device!
HAX is not working and emulator runs in emulation mode
emulator: Open HAX device failed

Why is it happening, and is there a way to fix it? Is there anyone else who gets those errors or vice versa?

By the way, I have an Intel CPU, if that could be a problem.

---

EDIT:

here's what I see in the BIOS, so it should be available... :

Solution 1

I had the same issue, solved it by Installing the Intel Hardware Accelerated Execution Manager. Download it with the SDK Manager, it's in Extras. After this, go to the folder

[Android SDK Root]\extras\intel\Hardware_Accelerated_Execution_Manager

then run IntelHaxm.exe and install.

Here the link of the Intel Hardware Accelerated IntelHaxm.exe for Microsoft Windows,Mac OS* X, and Linux Ubuntu

You'll get the following message if you don't have virtualization enabled in your BIOS:

Solution 2

Small Note for Windows 8 user, Intel HAX will not work if Hyper-V feature is enable. Hyper-V (like most of the virtualization tech) will exclusively lock the VT extension witch will prevent HAX to work properly. A workaround if you “need” Hyper-V too might be to stop manually the Hyper-V services when you need HAX (haven’t tested it yet through).

Solution 3

If all else fails. Simply try to download the Intel HAXM zip manually, extract and install. check here

Remember this only works for an Intel cpu that supports Intel Virtualization Technology. And you MUST enable virtulization in your bios.

It's a fairly decent and very noticeable improvement to the android emulator if you ask me.

Solution 4

Not every processor is supporting the virtualization!

To find out your chipset abilities go to http://ark.intel.com/, insert the name of your processor in the search line and check out the resolve.

Advanced Technologies: ...

Intel® Virtualization Technology (VT-x) = ???

If you see "No", you can forget HAXM!

Solution 5

Here are the steps to get the Hardware Accelerated Execution (HAX) which is really quite a lot:

1-check your processor Intel website to see if it supports Intel VT-x or not: http://ark.intel.com/Products/VirtualizationTechnology all Intel Core i processors and some other selected processors support Intel VT-x

2- check your bios to enable Intel VT-x , usually called hardware virtualization or Intel virtualization in bios

3- check if you are using a software conflicting with HAXM, popular software conflicting with haxm include but not limited to:

Hyper-V
Windows phone SDK 8
Avast antivirus 8 

4-install Intel management engine interface (MEI), this driver is usually not installed and is not part of retailer Windows DVD, even Windows 8. Check this post about how to install: http://communities.intel.com/community/vproexpert/blog/2011/12/19/mei-driver-now-available-via-microsoft-windows-update This driver is required and is not optional to activate Hardware Acceleration you can also install it from windows update

5-use android SDK manager to download Extras -> Intel x86 Hardware Accelerated Execution Manager.

6-Run installer of HAXM from: [Android SDK Root]\extras\intel\Hardware_Accelerated_Execution_Manager\IntelHaxm.exe

if you passed the previous steps the installer will work just fine ,otherwise it will fail

7-start AVD and see the difference in performance, Animations are faster System UI and launchers crashes in 4.0.3 but are just fine for 4.2.2

see installation guide by intel:

View more solutions

Comments

[Richard Le Mesurier]

Note - the Android SDK Manager does not actually do the installation - you must run the installation yourself after using the manager for the download: <sdk>/extras/intel/Hardware_Accelerated_Execution_Manager/In‌​telHAXM.exe

[Adrian Romanelli]

Richard is correct. I had the same problem, until I followed his comment. Go to developer.android.com/tools/devices/emulator.html#accel-vm, and scroll down to the section "Configuring VM Acceleration on Windows". Worked for me, no need to reinstall, or reinstall outside of the ADK, or anything.

[Zorb]

On Mac OSX 10,9 nedd also to install manualy hotfix from intel site software.intel.com/en-us/android/articles/…

[bran.io]

Thank you! I was having the same issues on my Mac.

[Admin]

Is isochronous support part of VT-x?

[android developer]

still got some errors when trying to execute the emulator , and the emulation either shows black (when using gpu) or is just slow as before , especially compared to a real device. is this a good configuration: tinypic.com/view.php?pic=efgv83&s=6 ?

[rallrall]

I just tested running this with the default hardware setup, was working fine then. This x86 emulator is still pretty new, so there's bound to be a bug or two. Try creating a new AVD and run it with the default HW setup.

[android developer]

can you please show me how to do this ? maybe i did something wrong . i tried many possible configurations...

[rallrall]

Avd Manager -> New -> Target: Android 4.0.3 - API Level 15 -> Intel Atom x86), done. This will give you the basic configuration. If you get errors with this as well, paste some log messages

[android developer]

still very slow and buggy. this is the configuration: tinypic.com/view.php?pic=2db5747&s=6 and this is the messages i get: tinypic.com/view.php?pic=r0yqlv&s=6 . i can see that it's slow by running the surfaceView examples on the API-demos app

[Ken Y-N]

@android developer Even on my high-end system, the performance difference between the ARM and x86 emulators is barely noticeable. Boot up is faster, and there's slightly less scroll lag, but otherwise it's no better than a low-end real phone.

[android developer]

so what gives? google has shown a demo about a year ago promising much faster emulation (and it was much faster) , and there are already alternatives that do it much faster (yet they don't have a lot of features and integration to eclipse&adt as the official emulator has) .

[android developer]

you mean that it won't work on cpus that don't have this feature? how would i know if i have it? my cpu is a little old , but it's usually fast enough for me , and i've tested it on other , much better computers than mine . my CPU is intel core i3 540 .

[Patrick Tescher]

According to this page it should work: ark.intel.com/products/46473/…

[Patrick Tescher]

Most modern CPUs support virtualization, you just have to turn it on in your BIOS.

[android developer]

wow , thanks . will try it soon and give you a "V" . for now , take a +1 . :) how do you enable it in the bios mode ?

[Patrick Tescher]

It depends on your computer, usually you press F2 or something when you boot up.

[android developer]

no , i didn't ask how to go to the bios settings . i asked how to enable it there . what's to look for there? have you tried it out ? does it work fine for your computer too? i also don't get why it's not enabled by default.

[Patrick Tescher]

It's usually labeled as virtualization, often under CPU.

[android developer]

ok , i went to the bios settings , but it was already enabled . sadly this returns me to the same situation as before. how could it be that it's so slow?

[Patrick Tescher]

Do you have VMWare or VirtualBox installed? Sometimes other hypervisors can conflict with Hax.

[android developer]

no , but i do have ubuntu installed . i've installed it via wubi . do you think i should uninstall it?

[android developer]

i've tested it on the ubuntu that i have , and it has the same slowliness (maybe even worse ) .

[android developer]

installed it in the past . no luck . btw , it was enabled in the BIOS , so still i don't understand why it's not as speedy as google has promised.

[android developer]

last link app told me it's incompatible with the current OS (which is windows 8) .

[android developer]

would using windows 8 be a possible cause that it doesn't work well ? also , do you think it could work on ubuntu ? what if ubuntu was installed via Wubi ?

[Jeff Axelrod]

@androiddeveloper I suggest you post your comment as a new question. This quote is not from me; it's from the Android developers website linked to in my answer.

[android developer]

do you have any experience with either of those questions? also , did you manage to make the new intel emulator work well so that it's much faster than the normal way the emulator works?

[Jeff Axelrod]

@androiddeveloper I ran the emulator with virtual machine acceleration (changing to the Intel Atom x86 CPU) and it seemed to take about the same time as the ARM emulator to boot. It seemed slightly more responsive than the ARM emulator, but still nothing like a real device. I didn't do any benchmarks. And no, I don't use Windows 8 or Ubuntu. I use Windows 7 x64--I wasn't aware of a Windows 8 being available.

[android developer]

so it's still not as fast as shown in google's videos . too bad.

[Jeff Axelrod]

@androiddeveloper I didn't take a look at their videos. While the speed of application execution doesn't seem too much faster, I have noticed that starting from Eclipse seems faster and debugging/stepping through source does seem noticeably more responsive. I would have expected the increase to be the other way around--faster execution vs. not much difference debugging.

[Liron]

Installing the HAXM causes my pc to bluescreen. The emulator works for me without it, even though I get the error message mentioned above.

[NoBugs]

You might have to run as admin if you get error downloading from SDK manager. (by right clicking the C:\Program Files\Android\android-sdk\SDK Manager and selecting run as Administrator).

[NoBugs]

Is there a similar installer for Linux?

[android developer]

interesting . there are multiple hyper-v services . which of them should i disable ?

[ofrommel]

disabling the service is not enough. you need to disable the feature.

[Scott Evernden]

actually - SDK manager download of HAX DOES work - it's downloading an extra's install file you must manually execute!

[Hoang Huynh]

Thanks for the info, this is exactly what my problem is.

[Dragan Marjanović]

Thanks! It runs very fast on HP ProBook 6550b (cpu i5 520m), it looks to me it's almost fast as on a real high end device. Emulator starts in 5-10s. Even no-gmaps support can be handled using solution presented here: stackoverflow.com/a/10540106/237232

[Robert Karl]

Ran the installer on OS X, 10.8.2, i7 MBPr. Crashes the system when an AVD tries to boot using Intel image. Found this note about incompatibility: software.intel.com/en-us/forums/topic/335810

[George]

OSX 1.8.2 look for dmg file and install. Works great here (hackintosh though)

[David van Dugteren]

If running in VMWare, be sure to enable VTX under processor settings.

[JosephL]

@Robert Karl There's a know issue on Mac OS X 10.8.2 that caused a Kernel Panic for me when I ran HAXM. Intel has a patch that fixes the issue you download it here: software.intel.com/en-us/articles/… Then open patched dmg file and follow the instructions.

[GoodSp33d]

@androiddeveloper It really works !!! When you installed HAXM how much RAM did you allocate ? I allocated 512 MB and its blazingly fast !

[android developer]

@2-Stroker after downloading the new driver (updated recently) i've tried to install it and it says that my computer doesn't support intel virtualization technology. guess i will never have a smooth emulator with my current computer. :( maybe i will try it at the office.

[CoronaPintu]

i think in my system there is not HAXM and i got this error can you suggest me what can i to solve this ?

[Radu Simionescu]

I get a kernel panic when running at some point: Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init!. I am on window 7x64 - cpu supports virtualization. I tried installing haxm both from sdk manager and intel web site. What to do?

[dbasch]

This link works better for finding if your CPU supports Intel® Virtualization Technology: ark.intel.com/Products/VirtualizationTechnology

[zim2411]

Thanks! I had incorrectly assumed the SDK Manager would auto install the HAXM package instead of just downloading it. Step 6 solved it for me.

[android developer]

others have answered a similar thing. it's just that it appears my computer can't support it, even though it's not that old and should be capable to run android smoothly. the proof is that it can run fine using virtualBox.

[gderaco]

I had your same issue, I just installed the manager and now works correctly

[android developer]

well i can't install using the link you've written.

[android developer]

i get the same as on this post: stackoverflow.com/a/10772162/878126 , meaning: "this computer does not support intel virtualization technology (VT-x). HAXM cannot be installed. Please refer to the Intel HAXM documentation for more information." .

[gderaco]

then there's no way, you would have to change hardware to run it

[android developer]

yes i know. it's just weird since the bios says that it has virtualization, and it's enabled. also, the computer isn't that old. i don't get what's the point of making the emulator work fine only if you have this component. any decent computer from the last 5 years should be able to run android just fine...

[Alireza Farahani]

I've enabled the "vt" in bios setting and then installed the intel haxm. Now my emulator starts but android doesn't boot and emulator keeps black. What's the problem? (windows 7-64bit, 4gig RAM, eclipse)

[William Gaul]

I followed this hyper-vandvmware.blogspot.de/2012/10/… and it works great. Requires a reboot but it allows both technologies to work on an installation but unfortunately not side-by-side.

[Oliver Drummond]

If you got freezes and crashes running it on a Mac with Mavericks, try using this hotfix from Intel (1.0.7) software.intel.com/en-us/android/articles/…

[Rasool Ghafari]

I enabled Virtualization in my BIOS and this is my Intel Processor but when i want to install the HAXM, get the error that says: This computer does not support Intel Virtualization Technology (VT-x). HAXM cannot be installed. Please refer to the Intel HAXM documentation for more information.

[ThomasW]

The OS X Mavericks issue is discussed on stackoverflow here: stackoverflow.com/questions/19243490/…

[jM2.me]

Note to Windows 8.1 Users: You must disable Hyper-V otherwise installer will think that VT-x is not available.

[android developer]

I don't use a Mac. However, I wonder, did it help? is it (the emulator) as fast as you'd hope it'd be? is it at least smooth? How did installing the driver help compared to without it?

[user1568901]

Ugh. Figures. My local machine has AMD processors and the available remote Intel based machine is running VMWare so it won't install there either!

[android developer]

@jM2.me how do you disable it?

[Himanshu Aggarwal]

@androiddeveloper This is how you can disable the Hyper-V after which you need to restart your system so that the system can configure those features, eightforums.com/tutorials/…

[Himanshu Aggarwal]

If anyone is having a problem that the screen of AVD is persistently black, then check the "Use Host GPU" checkbox while creating/editing the AVD.

[android developer]

@HimanshuAggarwal Thank you . It took a long time to disable it, and the driver finally successfully finished installing. I wonder if that was the whole reason for why it didn't work. Anyway, I've made a new emulator that uses the Intel image, and... it's faster but it also has weird issues like not responding to events on time, but in terms of performance , it's about as fast as my device, if you try out Antutu benchmark.

[android developer]

@HimanshuAggarwal However, if I use the old 2.3 emulator , it's still very slow. only newer ones work well.

[asgs]

Thanks! I now see "HAX is working and emulator runs in fast virt mode" :-D

[plocks]

That helped. Thanks a lot. Windows is a pain.

[Loai]

Thanks For Information , Is There any other ways to launch android projects without using previous way , Coz my intel don't support the VT-x @MuhammadAnnaqeeb

[MuhammadAnnaqeeb]

@Loai Of course you can run it without HAX. HAX is used only to speed up x86 emulation, not to enable it, and it does not speed up ARM emulation. Also if you have an android device you can debug your applications on the device itself, by connecting it to the computer, much faster than any accelerated emulator!

[Loai]

@MuhammadAnnaqeeb ok , as you said the HAX used to speed up the x86 emulations! , actually when i want to run my project through VM it ask me to install the HAX !

[MuhammadAnnaqeeb]

@Loai How does it ask you? Could you post a screenshot of that please? How long do you wait for emulator to launch after that before cancelling the launch? Do you launch ARM emulator without errors?

[Don Cheadle]

@jM2.me wat? What is 'Hyper-V' and how do we disable it?

[android developer]

It's still very slow and doesn't seem to help.