Windows 7 Windows XP mode cannot run - it says "Require Hardware Assisted Virtualization"

windows-7 virtualization windows-xp-mode

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Solution 1

Your machine may support it, but not have that support enabled. If your CPU supports hardware assisted virtualization, there will be a switch in the BIOS that will enable it.

What CPU does your system have? If its an AMD CPU, it will support hardware assited virtualization unless its a Sempron. If its an Intel CPU, then finding it on the following page will tell you whether or not it should support hardware assisted virtualization:

http://ark.intel.com/VTList.aspx

UPDATE: If you have it, the BIOS option may not be immediately obvious. On an AMD based machine it may be called "AMD-V", or on an Intel machine it may be called "Intel VT-x". If you don't have an option called "hardware assisted virtualization" look for some variant on the above two names.

UPDATE 2: Following your comment, it looks like you won't be able to enable the virtualization support without changing your CPU :(

Solution 2

FYI: The new version of Windows XP Mode has (thankfully) removed the requirement for Hardware-Assisted Virtualization. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/download.aspx

Solution 3

Turn it on in your BIOS. If you don't have it (some motherboards don't have this feature), you'll not be able to run XP Mode, but you can run software virtualised VMs like in the past.

7,030

GeekAbhiGeek

I started with Apple Basic and 6502 machine code and Assembly, then went onto Fortran, Pascal, C, Lisp (Scheme), microcode, Perl, Java, JavaScript, Python, Ruby, PHP, and Objective-C. Originally, I was going to go with an Atari... but it was a big expense for my family... and after months of me nagging, my dad agreed to buy an Apple ][. At that time, the Pineapple was also available. The few months in childhood seem to last forever. A few months nowadays seem to pass like days. Those days, a computer had 16kb or 48kb of RAM. Today, the computer has 16GB. So it is in fact a million times. If you know what D5 AA 96 means, we belong to the same era.

Updated on September 17, 2022

Comments

GeekAbhiGeek almost 2 years

After installing the 2 files for Windows 7 Windows XP mode, the Start Menu now has

Windows Virtual PC
Windows XP Mode

but clicking on the first merely brings out a folder, and clicking on the second brings out a dialog box that says: "Require Hardware Assisted Virtualization"

Does that mean the machine cannot support Windows 7 Windows XP mode? I am running Win 7 Ultimate 64 bit edition.

This is the dialog box:

Update: the computer is an HP TouchSmart, with American Megatrends BIOS v02.61. I looked into the BIOS set up but it is quite simple and dosen't have something for "hardware assisted virtualization". The CPU is Intel Core 2 Duo T5750.
- pelms over 14 years
  
  Microsoft has a tool to detect if your system supports hardware virtualization: microsoft.com/downloads/…
GeekAbhiGeek over 14 years

ah, please read update above... and it is an Intel Core 2 Duo T5750 (a desktop but using mobile Intel chip). According to the chart, it doesn't support hardware-assisted virtualization.
Ian Boyd over 14 years

i wish Microsoft would have left the requirement, forcing Intel and AMD to make the seven virtualization CPU instructions a de-facto part of the operation set - rather than making people pay extra for a feature already on the die, just disabled.