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maged5
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Can virtualization be enabled without EPT support?

I use workstation 12.1 and my processor supports vt-x(also enabled in BIOS) but using third party apps i found that it doesnt support intel EPT.

Is it possible to use the virtualization option in the workstation in my current state?

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wila
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Hi,

You do not have EPT on the CPU, your usage of virtualisation is a bit confusing as the ability to run your windows 7 guest within Windows 8 is based on using virtualisation, you would not have been able to run the Windows 7 guest without that.

The ability to run BlueStacks (which I am not familiar with) within Windows 7 appears to be based on running another hypervisor within your guest OS, aka nested virtualisation.

For nested virtualisation to run well you need virtual VT-x plus EPT support, which your CPU does not offer.

I looked at the bluestacks website and they call it "layercake" tehcnology without any details, an article about bluestacks on wikipedia tags it indeed as virtualisation technology.

If you want to run BlueStack on your current hardware then you will only be able to do so within your host OS Windows 8.

Bluestacks wouldn't really perform well as a nested guest anyways, although it might have sufficed for experimentation if you had a recent CPU and recent powerful graphics adapter.

--
Wil

| Author of Vimalin. The virtual machine Backup app for VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation and Player |
| More info at vimalin.com | Twitter @wilva

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wila
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Hi,

From the looks of it, EPT is not a requirement, but why don't you install the 30 days limited installation and see if it works well on your host?

See:

VMware Workstation 12 Pro Documentation Center

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Wil

| Author of Vimalin. The virtual machine Backup app for VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation and Player |
| More info at vimalin.com | Twitter @wilva
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maged5
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I have tried many ways but cant get it work if you have a way please tell me ( I already have workstation 12)

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wila
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Hi,

Already wondered about it when I posted my answer as it wasn't completely clear to me, but figured you would tell more if it wasn't helpful.

Can you elaborate on "Is it possible to use the virtualization option in the workstation in my current state?"

What exactly are you trying to do?

What processor do you have?

What is your host OS?

What 3rd party apps did you use to find out your CPU doesn't support EPT and did you run that at the host OS or the guest OS?

Are you seeing error messages and if so what is the exact text?

It might help to attach a vmware.log file from the guest OS that you are trying to run.

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Wil

| Author of Vimalin. The virtual machine Backup app for VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation and Player |
| More info at vimalin.com | Twitter @wilva
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wila
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Hi,

If you are trying to run nested virtualisation (eg. run ESXi with guest OS on top of workstation) then yes you might need EPT.


Here's a thread with details on that:

Virtualized Intel VT-x/EPT is disabled for this ESX VM. You will only be able to run 32-bit nested V...

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Wil

| Author of Vimalin. The virtual machine Backup app for VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation and Player |
| More info at vimalin.com | Twitter @wilva
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maged5
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I am trying to run Bluestacks app on windows 7 virtual machine but it is so slow without virtualzation enabled.

My processor is Intel core 2 quad Q9550.

My host OS is windows 8.1 .

To find hat my pc doesn't support EPT i used this tutorial : How to Check if Your CPU Supports Second Level Address Translation (SLAT) on my host OS.

In the VM processor setting in the virtualization engine section when i set the prefered mode to automatic and check "Virtualization Intel VT-x/EPT or AMD-V/RVI" and when i start the machine i get the following error : "Virtualized intel VT-x/EPT is not supported on this platform,Continue without virtualized Intel VT-x/EPT?"  .

And if i set the virtualization settings preferred mode to "Intel VT-x or AMD-V" and uncheck "Virtualization Intel VT-x/EPT or AMD-V/RVI" and then start the machine i don't get errors but i still don't get VT-x enabled (i can know this when i try to install intel's Hardware accelrated excution manager or haxm for short on the guest OS).

If i understand the nested virtualization correctly then no this is not what i am trying to do.

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wila
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Hi,

For the specifications on a CPU I normally look at the ark server from intel.

Your CPU's features are listed here:

http://ark.intel.com/nl/products/33924/Intel-Core2-Quad-Processor-Q9550-12M-Cache-2_83-GHz-1333-MHz-...

There's no SLAT/EPT section for that CPU.

EPT was introduced in Westmere microarchitecture family of processors, your CPU is from the Yorkfield family which comes from before Westmere.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_CPU_microarchitectures

For support on virtualized EPT you need to have hardware EPT support, so it all basically boils down to your CPU being too old to support what you are asking for.

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Wil

| Author of Vimalin. The virtual machine Backup app for VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation and Player |
| More info at vimalin.com | Twitter @wilva
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maged5
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So virtualization can't be enabled without EPT?or bluestacks can't work without it?

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wila
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Hi,

You do not have EPT on the CPU, your usage of virtualisation is a bit confusing as the ability to run your windows 7 guest within Windows 8 is based on using virtualisation, you would not have been able to run the Windows 7 guest without that.

The ability to run BlueStacks (which I am not familiar with) within Windows 7 appears to be based on running another hypervisor within your guest OS, aka nested virtualisation.

For nested virtualisation to run well you need virtual VT-x plus EPT support, which your CPU does not offer.

I looked at the bluestacks website and they call it "layercake" tehcnology without any details, an article about bluestacks on wikipedia tags it indeed as virtualisation technology.

If you want to run BlueStack on your current hardware then you will only be able to do so within your host OS Windows 8.

Bluestacks wouldn't really perform well as a nested guest anyways, although it might have sufficed for experimentation if you had a recent CPU and recent powerful graphics adapter.

--
Wil

| Author of Vimalin. The virtual machine Backup app for VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation and Player |
| More info at vimalin.com | Twitter @wilva
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maged5
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Thank you for this information.

I have one last point why is it when i set the preferred mode to "intel vt-x / Amd-R"(without EPT) i still don't get virtualization enabled in the guest OS?

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wila
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Hello,

Since we've now determined that your use case is actually some form of running nested guests, the following article becomes relevant:

Running Nested VMs

and specifically for your question,  this part (emphasis mine):

Running Guest Hypervisors without Virtualized HV

VMware products prior to ESXi 5.0, Workstation 8 or Fusion 4 do not virtualize the hardware-assisted virtualization capabilities of the physical processor (or 64-bit segment limit checks on AMD processors). If the host hypervisor is an older VMware product, or if your host does not support EPT or RVI (but it does support Intel VT-x or AMD-V) you can still run nested guests without virtualized HV. However, you will only be able to run 32-bit nested guests using binary translation under a VMware guest hypervisor. You can also run 32-bit nested guests using the binary translation features of Windows Virtual PC or VPC2007.

Even in this configuration, running nested VMs requires host support for hardware-assisted virtualization.  Furthermore, the outer guest must be configured to use hardware-assisted virtualization.  For instructions on enabling hardware-assisted virtualization for the outer guest, see VMware Products and Hardware-Assisted Virtualization (VT-x/AMD-V).

My best guess is that the Android hypervisor needs support for x64 and that won't work without EPT.

You might also want to look at the android-x86 project that can be run directly as a VM.

Although personally I only had mixed success with a previous version (it crashed a lot) it might nowadays be usable.

--

Wil

edit: The files for download on android-x86 arent' exactly where you expect them, the version 6 preview that is talked about can be found here under the "testing" folder.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/android-x86/files/

I'll be testing it a bit myself too (just curious how it progressed)

| Author of Vimalin. The virtual machine Backup app for VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation and Player |
| More info at vimalin.com | Twitter @wilva