VirtualBox and Hyper-V compatibility

[rico.tiko]

Hello everyone!

I installed VirtualBox on a Windows machine, but it doesn't work. I get the following error VT-x is not available (VER_VMX_NO_VMX). E_FAIL (0x80004005). I think that maybe it is because of the Hyper-V I have deployed. However, it wasn't running when I tried to start the VirtualBox VM. What is wrong? Any ideas?

[Official Moderator]

Hi, @rico.tiko!

What is probably causing an error is precisely the fact that you have Hyper-V installed. In your case, VirtualBox is a Type 2 hypervisor, while Hyper-V is a type 1. The main difference is that a type 2 hypervisor is deployed on the OS which is running on your hardware. At the same time, a Type 1 hypervisor is deployed directly on the hardware. And this is where the problem occurs. All of the hypervisors need processor virtualization extensions. It is a set of instructions set for the hardware virtualization (AMD-V. or Intel VT-x). Hyper-V takes complete control of the extensions, making them not available for the VirtualBox because only one software component is able to use Intel VT-x or AMD-V at the same time.

Now let's see how to make them work together.

You have several methods to deal with the incompatibility issues:
1. You can uninstall Hyper-V in the GUI.
2. Alternatively, you could utilize PowerShell to disable the Hyper-V feature.
3. There is one more method using PowerShell. You can uninstall the Hyper-V role with dism.exe
4. Another way to disable Hyper-V is by using BCDedit.
5. You can disable Device Guard and Credential Guard.

Note: VirtualBox can function with Hyper-V, Device and Credential Guard, only from VirtualBox 6.0.

Check the detailed guide on how to work with every method in this blog post https://www.nakivo.com/blog/virtualization-applications-with-hyper-v-device-guard-and-credential-guard/