virtualization Archives - Networking HowTos

Check if your Windows 10 PC can run Hyper-V

March 3, 2021 Hyper-V, Microsoft, Windows

Windows 10 Pro and Enterprise versions include the ability to run the Hyper-V hypervisor at no additional charge. While these versions of Windows may include Hyper-V support, that doesn’t mean that your computer can fully support Hyper-V. Most modern CPU’s will support hardware virtualization nowadays, but these options may need to be enabled in the BIOS before they can be used.

You can check to see if your Windows 10 computer is capable of running Hyper-V by following the steps below.

Press the start button and type “system information”, and click the “System Information” shortcut which should be shown as per the below screenshot.

Press the windows key on the keyboard, and the “r” key at the same time, to bring up the “Run” dialog window. Type in “msinfo32” and press enter or click “OK”.

This should launch the “System Information” window and look something like this:

While “System Summary” is selected, scroll down on the right hand pane, until you get to the “Hyper-V” options (generally all the way at the bottom).

As you can see in the example above, there are 4 Hyper-V items that you need to focus on.

Hyper-V – VM Monitor Mode Extensions
Hyper-V – Second Level Address Translation Extensions
Hyper-V – Virtualization Enabled in Firmware
Hyper-V – Data Execution Protection

If these all say “Yes” as per the above example, you are good to go, and your Windows 10 computer fully supports Hyper-V.

If any of these 4 items have a value of “No”, you may need to check your BIOS settings to ensure that the relevant virtualization options (if available) are enabled. If all the virtualization options in the BIOS are already enabled, and you still get ‘No’ values appearing, your PC may not support Hyper-V.

Run VMware Workstation Virtual Machines in the Background

May 26, 2017 Virtualization, VMWare

VMware Workstation is a great tool for running virtual machines on a desktop computer/laptop. It allows you to run virtualized operating systems on your PC without having to go to the effort of setting up dual boot scenarios, or can be great for testing something in a hurry. Usually you would open VMware workstation, and run the virtual machine, which in turn, will start running, showing you the output from the console of the virtual machine. This is great for a virtual Windows machine, however if you are virtualizing something like a Linux server, you may not want to have the VMware Workstation window appearing, so the virtual machine can just be running in the background, and you can SSH in to work on it.
Thankfully you can do this with VMware Workstation, however it requires you to set up a shortcut or batch file to execute a custom vmware workstation command.
The following command will start the specified virtual machine (referenced by the .vmx file) in the background, and not open VMWare Workstation itself.
Note the “nogui” parameter at the end of the below command line

"C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware Workstation\VMRun.exe" -T ws start "C:\path\to\virtual machine.vmx" nogui

The key to starting the virtual machine in the background is the “nogui” parameter on the end of the command line. Make sure you include this. You may have to scroll across if you don’t see it at the end of the example line above. This “nogui” parameter starts the virtual machine in the background, and doesn’t open VMware Workstation itself.
Modify the path to vmrun.exe to suit your system, and obviously the path and filename for your VMware .vmx file for the virtual machine you want to start in the background.
Include quotes where needed if your file paths have spaces in them.
Once running, you should see the VMware Workstation icon in the system tray change to ‘virtual machines running’ icon with the play icon.