Run Hyper-V and VirtualBox concurrently

Discussions related to using VirtualBox on Windows hosts.
Hong
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Joined: 22. Sep 2013, 12:05

Run Hyper-V and VirtualBox concurrently

Post by Hong »

Unless I was fooling myself in a big way, I was running Hyper-V and VirtualBox 4.x.x concurrently on my Windows 8.1 machine (Intel i5 CPU) without any problems. I need this because I run Genymotion Android emulators which require VirtualBox and Windows Phone emulators which require Hyper-V. I upgraded VirtualBox to 5.0 yesterday, and I cannot do this anymore. It seems that VB 5.0 requires Hyper-V turned off.

Could you anyone shed some light on this? Is there a way to run VB5.0 and Hyper-V concurrently?
loukingjr
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Re: Run Hyper-V and VirtualBox concurrently

Post by loukingjr »

You were fooling yourself. VirtualBox does not support nesting hypervisors.
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Hong
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Re: Run Hyper-V and VirtualBox concurrently

Post by Hong »

Thanks a lot for your prompt response.

How could I run Genymotion emulators and Windows Phone emulators concurrently? The primary reason that I chose Genymotion over Android emulators using Intel HAXM is that HAXM requires Hyper-V turned off. I did not want to reboot my computer frequently by turning Hyper-V on/off, so I have been using Genymotion.

I am really puzzled now.
loukingjr
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Re: Run Hyper-V and VirtualBox concurrently

Post by loukingjr »

I've never run HAXM or Genymotion so I can't say. I just know VirtualBox and Hyper-V are not compatible.
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noteirak
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Re: Run Hyper-V and VirtualBox concurrently

Post by noteirak »

The heart of the problem is that Hyper-V locks exclusivly the virtualization feature(s) of the CPU, and will not share them with other software.
VirtualBox can be configured to play nice (as much as technically possible) but also require the other hypervisor to do the same.
Even if they were, running two hypervisors concurrently is never guarantee to be stable, nor will it be given any support higher than "best effort".

What you need to do is investigate how to make Hyper-V play nicer, if possible at all, enable that setting, and see how things go.
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loukingjr
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Re: Run Hyper-V and VirtualBox concurrently

Post by loukingjr »

Just to add something, Hyper-v locks VT-x. However, VirtualBox pre-5.0 may have been able to run 32bit guests only, with no hardware virtualization which means it would be very slow. They may have decided in VB 5.0 to lock out that possibility. Just conjecture on my part. You could roll back to the version of VB you were using before and see.
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Hong
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Re: Run Hyper-V and VirtualBox concurrently

Post by Hong »

Thank you all for the elucidation.
I would love to roll back, but I have never been able to uninstall VB. I have tried over a dozen times, but always get a BSOD of a few variants.
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Hong
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Re: Run Hyper-V and VirtualBox concurrently

Post by Hong »

Hallelujah!!! I am back to fooling myself now. Though I could not uninstall VB5.0, but to my surprise I can uninstall it by installing VB4.3.30. Now I can run Windows Phone emulators suing Hyper-V and Genymotion Android emulators using VirtualBox concurrently.

What a relief!!! Thank you all again.
Ramshankar
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Re: Run Hyper-V and VirtualBox concurrently

Post by Ramshankar »

loukingjr wrote:Just to add something, Hyper-v locks VT-x. However, VirtualBox pre-5.0 may have been able to run 32bit guests only, with no hardware virtualization which means it would be very slow. They may have decided in VB 5.0 to lock out that possibility.
No. Raw-mode is still supported, except for OS X hosts where VT-x is mandatory for VirtualBox 5.0 and newer (iirc).
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Hong
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Re: Run Hyper-V and VirtualBox concurrently

Post by Hong »

How can I use the "Raw mode" in VirtualBox 5.0? Actually, I do not know what "Raw-mode" is, but it sounds like what I need.
Last edited by Hong on 20. Jul 2015, 22:56, edited 1 time in total.
loukingjr
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Re: Run Hyper-V and VirtualBox concurrently

Post by loukingjr »

I am lost. :lol:
I have been told for something like 6 years you can't run Hyper-V and VirtualBox concurrently. And this is from the VirtualBox manual…
Warning: Do not run other hypervisors (open-source or commercial virtualization products) together with VirtualBox! While several hypervisors can normally be installed in parallel, do not attempt to run several virtual machines from competing hypervisors at the same time.
I guess I need to start over. 8)
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noteirak
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Re: Run Hyper-V and VirtualBox concurrently

Post by noteirak »

Doesn't it confirm what you've been told then? I believe the keyword here is "competing" - for VT-x/AMD-V per example.
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loukingjr
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Re: Run Hyper-V and VirtualBox concurrently

Post by loukingjr »

noteirak wrote:Doesn't it confirm what you've been told then? I believe the keyword here is "competing" - for VT-x/AMD-V per example.
Hardly. The user states he can run both on 4.3.30 AND when I said you couldn't there was this…
Ramshankar wrote: No. Raw-mode is still supported, except for OS X hosts where VT-x is mandatory for VirtualBox 5.0 and newer (iirc).
So you tell me if it confirms what I said. :)
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Hong
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Re: Run Hyper-V and VirtualBox concurrently

Post by Hong »

Please feel free to let me know if I can provide any information to help clarify this.
Thank you all once more. I am a happy user of VB and Hyper-V again.
BillG
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Re: Run Hyper-V and VirtualBox concurrently

Post by BillG »

I am just as confused as Lou. Hyper-V locks on to hardware virtualization at boot time, even before the OS loads, and always has. The only way to prevent it is to modify the loader using BCDEDIT. I have no idea how raw-mode got into the discussion ( and have no wish to find out, because I would never use it). I also have no ides why OS X hosts got a mention when discussing Hyper-V and Windows hosts.
Bill
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