Fix: Virtualization software not working on Windows

If you’re looking forward to use third-party virtualization software on your system and it is not working, this article may interest you. Usually, we will use virtualization software to test any operating system without affecting the original operating system on the machine. Virtualization software will create favourable environment for the operating system we want to test and we can use it like it is installed on the physical machine. Some well known virtualization software in market are VirtualBox, VMware Workstation etc. However, if third-party virtualization software not working on Windows, we’ll see how you can fix it in this post.

So Microsoft has identified this issue and they have also released a workaround or fix for this. This problem can occur on systems having Hyper-V enabled. In Windows, Hyper-V specifically provides hardware virtualization and it is a built-in feature. Hyper-V works with hypervisor, which requires a physical processor with specific features. The hypervisor manages the interactions between the hardware and the virtual machines. This hypervisor-controlled access to the hardware gives virtual machines the isolated environment in which they run.

When you access System Summary by running msinfo32.exe command, you’ll find A hypervisor has been detected. Features required for Hyper-V will not be displayed mentioned, if you’ve Hyper-V enabled.

Now this may cause issue for other virtualization software and they might not work. Here is how to fix it.

Fix: Virtualization software not working on Windows

This problem basically occurs due to hardware virtualization extensions, available on most of the modern processors. This includes Intel VT-x and AMD-V technologies. There is a restriction that only one virtualization software can use this hardware at a time. So if Hyper-V is using that hardware, it is quite obvious that other virtualization software may not use that component at same time. And thus other virtualization software fails to work as expected.

To resolve this problem, follow these steps:

1. Search for Turn Windows features on or off and open it.

2. In Turn Windows features on or off window, locate Hyper-V > Hyper-V Platform > Hyper-V Hypervisor and uncheck that option.

3. Click OK to apply changes.

After that, you will find that now your third-party virtualization software is working without any problem.

You can also refer this official Microsoft documentation for more information on this.

That’s it!

Read next: How to create Windows 11 Virtual Machine using Hyper-V.