virtualbox.org

Hello,
I am running Windows XP home edition 32bit with SP3 and all latest updates.
I have installed Virtualbox version 4.2.4 r81684. I have been able to create a new virtual machine and installed Windows 7 32bit just fine. I then created a new virtual machine for windows 8 pro eval edition. However during installation I received this error " VT-x/Amd-V hardware acceleration is not available on your system?" I don't know what this means? Is windows 8 pro 32bit
not supported on top of Windows XP? How can I fix this problem so I can complete the installation of Windows 8 pro 32bit?


error message:

VT-x/AMD-V hardware acceleration is not available on your system. Certain guests (e.g. OS/2 and QNX) require this feature and will fail to boot without it.

VT-x is hardware assisted virtualization. It is required to run 64bit guests, plus some other guests with funny requirements such as Win8eval. The message says that your PC doesn't have it.

Does that mean it's not available, period; or that it simply hasn't been enabled in the BIOS?

There are several dialogs with subtly different wordings, AFAIK the wording given means not available, period. E.g. because the CPU capabilities mask says no VT-x or AMD-v.

Thank you everyone for your knowledge and help in understanding this error message. I do have an older PC with an Intel Pentium-4 Dual Core CPU and hardware. I guess it has reached it limitation on the Windows OS platform?

Alex@SV_Cal wrote:I guess it has reached it limitation on the Windows OS platform?

Depends what you mean. If it's dual core then it's probably a very capable processor, ideal for running 32bit VMs - especially if you max out the host memory (i.e. 4GB) and make sure to have plenty of disk space. You just can't run a 64bit VM. For me that would be no problem - I don't find that 32bits leaves me short of memory, so I wouldn't want to take the performance hit of 64bits.

Sorry to bring this thread back to life, but I have a similar problem.

You mentioned that VT-x is required to run 64 bits guests. However, I was trying to install Windows 8 Pro 32 bits... Why doesn't it work then? Thanks.

That's because Windows 8 has additional funny requirements used for implementing system security features I believe (I'm not a Win8 user). These modern CPU features are again only available when hardware assisted virtualization is used. If you find the original Win8 discussion thread on this site then you can read all the gory details.