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Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V + VirtualBox

Posted: 11. Mar 2011, 20:03
by graealex
Hello Forum,

I'm trying to get VirtualBox running on a machine which also runs Hyper-V. The system is:

DELL PowerEdge
2x Intel Xeon E5620
24 GB RAM
Virtualization Enabled in BIOS

Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard
VirtualBox 4.0.4r70112 (64 bit)

The problem: if DEP is enabled in the BIOS, VirtualBox will not allow me to have more than one processor. It also freezes the host computer when a virtual machine is launched -- no bluescreen, just freeze. If DEP is disabled, VirtualBox will allow me to select more than one processor and runs fine. However, Hyper-V requires DEP to be enabled in the BIOS, or else it won't load.

Questions: can Hyper-V and VirtualBox coexist on the same machine? If it is possible, what changes or what settings are required to run both of them. Does it even make sense to run them both, or should I just run all my VB machines in Hyper-V.

Regards, Alex

Re: Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V + VirtualBox

Posted: 11. Mar 2011, 20:14
by Perryg
You can't run two Hardware-v virtualizers at the same time. To do so would corrupt the host and no telling what else.

Re: Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V + VirtualBox

Posted: 11. Mar 2011, 21:34
by andreask
Most interesting.
I'm unsuccessful trying to get VirtualBox running on a similar Dell-Machine with 32GB for a few days now.
http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=39822
Did you change any Bios-Settings??

Re: Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V + VirtualBox

Posted: 12. Mar 2011, 00:30
by Sasquatch
As said by Perry, you can't run them at the same time. And since Hyper-V runs all the time, you have to remove that role before you can use VB with VT-x options. As long as Hyper-V is running, you have to put VB in software mode and you will be unable to use multi-core and 64 bit VMs.

Re: Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V + VirtualBox

Posted: 28. Jun 2011, 11:43
by ie12
You do not have to uninstall the Hyper-V role for virtualbox to run under windows 2008.

Just set the start-up mode of hvmount.sys to ondemand (value 3 in the registry).
Please do a web search for the details.

Alternatively, use bcedit to optionally boot with hyper-v disabled.

I would suggest the first method...

Re: Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V + VirtualBox

Posted: 19. May 2012, 23:53
by BetsyD
To get Hyper-V and VirtualBox to coexist, by setting the startup mode of the Hyper-V hypervisor (hvboot.sys) to "on demand", here are a couple of methods that have worked for me:

(1) Edit the registry. At HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\hvboot, change the DWord value "Start" from 1 to 3.

OR

(2) Open a command prompt with Administrator privilege and type: sc config hvboot start= demand
(Must include the space after the "=". To undo the command, use start= system.)

Either way, it's a one-time configuration change. A reboot is needed before either version takes effect.

After I've done either (1) or (2) above, I can leave both VirtualBox and the Hyper-V role installed. VirtualBox runs with no additional steps. To run Hyper-V, I first close VirtualBox if it's open, then run a command in an elevated command window: net start hvboot

To run VirtualBox again after running Hyper-V by this method, I have to reboot.