Today, more and more modern computer systems are turning their attention to virtualization technologies. True, not everyone has a clear enough idea of what it is, why it is needed and how to solve the issues of its inclusion or practical use. Now it will be considered how to enable virtualization in the BIOS using the simplest method. We note right away that this technique is applicable to absolutely all existing systems, in particular, to the BIOS and the UEFI system that replaced it.
What is virtualization and why is it needed?
Before proceeding to directly solve the problem, how to enable virtualization in BIOS, let's see what this technology is and why it is needed.
The technology itself is intended for use in any operating system of so-called virtual machines that can emulate real computers with all their hardware and software components. In other words, in the main system, you can create a kind of virtual computer with the selection of a processor, RAM, video and sound card, network adapter, hard drive, optical media, and God knows what else, including installing a guest (child) "OS" that does nothingwill not differ from a real computer terminal.
Varieties of technologies
If anyone does not know, virtualization technologies were created by leading processor manufacturers - Intel and AMD corporations, which today cannot share the palm in this area. At the dawn of the era, the created hypervisor (software for managing virtual machines) from Intel did not meet all the requirements in terms of performance level, which is why the development of support for virtual systems began, which were supposed to be "hardwired" in the processor chips themselves.
Intel called this technology Intel-VT-x, and AMD named it AMD-V. Thus, the support has optimized the performance of the CPU without affecting the main system.
It goes without saying that you should enable this option in the BIOS presets only if you intend to use a virtual machine on a physical machine, for example, to test programs or predict the behavior of a computer system with various hardware components after installation one or another operating system. Otherwise, such support may not be used. In addition, it is generally disabled by default and, as already mentioned, it has absolutely no effect on the performance of the main system.
Enter BIOS
As for BIOS or UEFI systems, any computer or laptop has them, regardless of the complexity of the installed equipment. The BIOS itself on the computeris a small chip on the motherboard that is responsible for testing the hardware when the terminal is turned on. In it, despite the memory of only about 1 MB, the main settings and characteristics of the equipment are saved.
Depending on the BIOS version or manufacturer, there are several different ways to log in. The most common is to use the Del key immediately after turning on the computer or laptop. However, there are other methods, such as F2, F12, etc.
How to enable virtualization in BIOS in the simplest way?
Now let's define some basic parameters and menus. We start from the fact that the entrance to the BIOS on the computer has already been made. There are several main sections here, but in this case we are interested in everything related to the processor chip.
Usually these options are found in the advanced settings menu (Advanced) or in the security section (Security). They can also be called differently, but, as a rule, it is something like Processor or BIOS Chipset (although other names may occur).
So, now the question of how to enable virtualization in BIOS can be considered closely. In the above sections, there is a special line Virtualization Technology (in the case of Intel, the name of the corporation is added to the main name). When entering the corresponding menu, two available options will be shown: Enabled and Disabled. As it is already clear, the first is the enabled virtualization mode, the second– complete shutdown.
The same applies to the UEFI system, in which this option is enabled in a completely similar way.
Now that the BIOS setting has been applied to the enabled mode parameter, all that remains is to save the changes (F10 or the Save & Exit Setup command), press the Y confirmation key corresponding to the English word Yes. Restarting the system with the newly saved settings starts automatically.
What else should you know besides this?
As you can see, the procedure for enabling virtualization in the BIOS is quite simple. However, here you should take into account some subtleties associated with the possible disabling of this function. The fact is that when using virtual machines like WMware Virtual Machine, Virtual PC, VirtualBox, or even the "native" Microsoft module called Hyper-V, this option must be enabled without fail even if support for Windows components is enabled directly in the system settings.
Most of this applies to newer modifications of Windows, starting with the "seven". In "Exp" or "Vista" this is not a prerequisite. Although if such "OSes" are installed on the latest "iron", the inclusion of support may also be required. However, it is unlikely that the user on such a machine will install a morally obsolete “OS” that will not allow “squeezing” the maximum of what it is capable of from the computer hardware. So it's better to use the latest "iron" components in combination with not only the mostthe latest versions of operating systems, but even with diagnostic systems and UEFI controls that replaced the BIOS that served for so long.
