How to have a Windows 11 guest

[diagonalb]

I have an up-to-date Windows 10 x64 guest OS.

Using the PC Health Check program, I clicked the "Check now" button for checking if my system meets the Windows 11 requirements. Below are the results I got back:

vm-windows11-upgrade-check-results.png (25.81 KiB) Viewed 1295 times

I have the following questions:
1. How do I enable secure boot for my VM? Is this in the VirtualBox settings for the VM, or in the UEFI settings for the VM?
2. I assume the processor that the PC Health Check tool sees is based on whatever VirtualBox is telling the guest OS. Is it possible to change what VirtualBox is reporting to the guest OS? Or does VirtualBox simply always report the host OS's processor to the guest OS?
3. In general, how can I load a VM's UEFI menu when I am booting the VM? Which function key on my keyboard (or combination of keys) do I need to press to bring it up? (I suppose a secondary question is how to configure a VM to use UEFI instead of BIOS.)

[scottgus1]

Virtualbox 6.1 does not yet have the Secure Boot and TPM needed by Windows 11. 7.0 will have them. The test builds are what 7.0 will be when it is released. Save the test build installer until you update again later.

Folks running 11 in 6.1 are using the published hacks to get 11 to run no-secure-boot-no-tpm hardware and VMs.

The processor might be a killer. Virtualbox does not emulate the processor, it passes the host processor through to the VM. So that incompatible CPU cannot be hidden from 11 as far as I know, unless the published hacks account for that, too

How do I load the EFI menu?

Press Esc while the VM BIOS is booting.

[mpack]

unless the published hacks account for [the processor], too

They do. Though IMO if you're going to apply the registry tweaks to disable the processor limitation then you may as well apply the TPM tweak too.

[Ken S]

Ok ... I have a host running Windows 11, 11th Gen Intel i5-11600@2.8, 32 gigs, Windows 11 Home 21H2 (updated today)

VBox is 6.1.35r151573 (Qt5.6.2)

I have a guest (copy of my development VM, to be safe) which is running Windows 10, 12GB 64 bit, x64-based processor, Windows 10 Home, 21H1 OS build 19043.1706

I load VBox, then load my VM. and run PC Health Check and Check now.

I receive
This PC must support secure boot, and
TPM 2.0 must be supported and enabled on this PC

I assume there are settings (in the VM?) that need to be set but I cannot see which ones. I have searched and found various registry settings but I was thinking this version supported it.

Can someone point me to some documentation on this?

Thanks

Ken

[mpack]

The question of how to get Windows 11 to run on older hardware is not unique to VMs. The best source of info on this is Google.

[Ken S]

Thanks ... I thought (incorrectly) that because Windows 11 is running on my host and I was using the version of VBox that supported Windows 11, that Windows 11 would run in my VM.

Thanks for the reply.

[mpack]

I have no information that VirtualBox 6.1.35 supports Win11 any more than 6.1.34 does. I don't habitually use test builds so I could be wrong about this, but it was my understanding that it's the 6.1.9x development snapshots that are builds of what will become VirtualBox 7, the version whose virtual hardware has been updated to a level expected by Win11.

But note that you don't care about that, because - as made clear above - you have the wrong processor and so can never be compatible without using registry hacks.

[Ken S]

I have no information that VirtualBox 6.1.35 supports Win11 any more than 6.1.34 does.

Sorry, I was going on "Virtualbox 6.1 does not yet have the Secure Boot and TPM needed by Windows 11. 7.0 will have them. The test builds are what 7.0", in this thread, so I just followed the "test builds" link.

But note that you don't care about that, because - as made clear above - you have the wrong processor and so can never be compatible without using registry hacks.

I had installed Windows 11 on the host, with no registry hacks, and Windows had previously reported that the host was Win 11 compatible, so I again incorrectly assumed that the processor was ok for Win 11 guest.

I must have missed your reply about "as made clear above"

Thanks

[mpack]

The health check in your first post says that the processor is incompatible. Since the real processor is seen by the VM it should not matter whether you did this test in a host or the guest.

This also implies that registry hacks were in fact needed to install Win11 on the host. I assume you understand that host and guest are separate computers and each need their own hack.

See https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en ... 0-ghz.html, though I'm not sure what precise variant of Xeon E5 you have. The link is to the newest one. IMO the main point to note is that the newest variant was released in 2016, which is probably older than Win11 likes, which would explain the health check result.

[scottgus1]

I was going on "Virtualbox 6.1 does not yet have the Secure Boot and TPM needed by Windows 11. 7.0 will have them. The test builds are what 7.0"

Sorry about misleading you there, I did forget it's the 6.1.9# development snapshots at the bottom of the Test Builds page which will be 7.0, like Mpack says....

[Ken S]

Sorry about misleading you there, I did forget it's the 6.1.9# development snapshots at the bottom of the Test Builds page which will be 7.0, like Mpack says....

No problems, thanks for clearing that up, think I will wait until 7.0.

Ken

[Ken S]

The health check in your first post says that the processor is incompatible.

The image? Not mine.

[scottgus1]

The image? Not mine.

This is why starting your own topic instead of posting on someone else's is a good idea: It avoids confusion.

[Ken S]

Probably... but the posting guidelines say one topic one thread and I thought it was very similar .... my mistake.

[mpack]

the posting guidelines say one topic one thread

Meaning that people should confine themselves to one question per topic.

If you post a "me too" in someone elses topic then it will always be assumed that your scenario is IDENTICAL in all relevant respects to that posed by the OP. Obviously the choice of processor is a relevant fact here, and it was even a key fact disclosed by the OP. Had anyone noticed that you named a different processor then by all rights your post should have been deleted.