can't create 64bit vmachine on windows 10 64bit

[Martin]

Did you already try to enable Hyper-V in Windows Features and disabling it again?
There were some reports of it being partially acive without showing up activated after updates of Windows 10.
Also viewtopic.php?f=6&t=81835

[cwmcd]

i don't believe that i had enabled it. the faq just had me look to see if it was checked or not, which it was not.

also curious, there does seem to be some things in the bios that sound like maybe they are trying to make sure that code is contained within the hardware virtualization environment.

could those be interfering with the software implementation of virtualization?

i was just looking and i saw something from 8 yrs ago on the forum and it looked like there was some settings in bios that did just that. forum won't let me post links but it was from a user named ecsdrive:

"You need to have in BIOS Trusted Execution set to OFF and TPM set to ON"

the features he mentioned i don't believe are in my bios but just wondering if it could be something like that.

sorry if i'm getting a little bleary, it's about 2:30am here.

[mpack]

the faq just had me look to see if it was checked or not, which it was not.

The FAQ had rather more to say on the subject than that. Nonetheless, providing Windows 10 support is a little beyond our purview here. The FAQ points you in the right direction, but it's up to you to know your own tools.

[Martin]

i don't believe that i had enabled it. the faq just had me look to see if it was checked or not, which it was not.

The problem some reported was that it didn't show up as "checked" even when some parts were active.
They had to activate it, reboot, disable it and reboot again to deactivate it completely.

[cwmcd]

ok....SO

<long winded solution>
you guys seemed pretty adamant that it was indeed in the bios, so since i have become intimately familiar with what everything looked like in there i decided to reset it to 'optimal' settings and see what it defaulted things to.

here's what i found:

under advanced>cpu setup
intel (r) virtualization technology DISABLED
vt-d GREYED OUT/DISABLED
TxT GREYED OUT/DISABLED

under security>TCG Feature Setup
TCG security feature INACTIVE

under startup
quick boot DISABLED

in windows i ran (win+x>run) msinfo32.exe which gave me the results of:

hyper v monitor mode extensions YES
hyper v second level address translation extensions YES
hyper v virtualization enabled in firmware NO
hyper v data execution protection YES

and of course vbox still only gave me 32bit options

with me so far?

long story long, i changed intel virtualization technology to [enabled] (which ungreyed vt-d and TxT), msinfo32 now gave me hyper v virtualization enabled in firmware YES and vbox gave me 64bit options. HALELUYA!

going back into bios i set vt-d to enabled and still got the same results. YES and 64bit

NOW going back into bios again, apparently TxT and TCG are connected. so when you set TxT to ENABLED , it sets TCG to ACTIVE and likewise if you set TCG to INACTIVE/DISABLED it sets TxT to DISABLED

TxT had a long description in bios but basically it stands for TRUSTED EXECUTION TECHNOLOGY and TCG stands for TRUSTED COMPUTING GROUP SECURITY FEATURE but i think these had something to do like that forum post from here 8 years ago said about those bios features that were like some sort of code security for virtualization that's done within the chipsets. probably some sort of TPM cryptoprocessor which i suppose would make sense? O.o

so as you've probably guessed by now, when i enabled/activated TxT/TCG, msinfo32 now gave me virtualization enabled in firmware NO and vbox only had 32bit options.

i haven't tried to load up a 64bit virtual guest but it's pushing 4am here and i'm willing to believe when i do that it will work fine. if not, i'll see you back here

thanks for all the input guys and helping me to suss out an issue that i've been trying to figure out for days now.

(oh and quick boot on or off made no difference)