Does Surface Pro 8 support VT-x (Virtualization Technology) to run VirtualBox?

Question

Does Surface Pro 8 support VT-x (Virtualization Technology) to run VirtualBox?

JohnnyP86 1

I tried to run a VirtualBox on my Surface Pro 8, however the VirtualBox does not run at all or if so very slowly.
It seems to me that Intel Virtualization Features are not enabled, altough Windows 11 tries to tell me otherwise (see screenshots).

How can I enable virtualization on my Surface Pro 8?

4 answers

Your answer

Answer 1

Anonymous

The product group for Surface hardware actively monitors questions over at
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/forum
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/surface-devices/ct-p/SurfaceDevices

Also
https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch01.html#hostossupport
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/enable-virtualization-on-windows-11-pcs-c5578302-6e43-4b4b-a449-8ced115f58e1

--please don't forget to upvote and Accept as answer if the reply is helpful--

Anonymous

2022-06-07T13:36:57.293+00:00

Just checking if there's any progress or updates?

--please don't forget to upvote and Accept as answer if the reply is helpful--

Answer 2

Limitless Technology 39,926

Hi every chip for the last 10 years has supported Intel virtualization features, but a good few Windows features can steal it and block other applications from using it.

Here are a few examples:

Windows Defender Core Isolation
Windows Virtual Host Platform
Windows Hyper-V
Windows Sandbox (docker based)
Docker
Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL)

Check these and then try again.

--If the reply is helpful, please Upvote and Accept as answer--

JohnnyP86 1 Reputation point

2022-06-09T07:34:57.97+00:00
Hi!
Thanks for your reply. I did the following steps (as found in another forum):

Turn off Hyper-V. Run the "Turn Windows features on or off" applet and uncheck the entire "Hyper-V" tree

Disable Credential Guard: Run the "Edit group policy" applet, and navigate to the Local Computer Policy > Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > System > Device Guard group. For the "Turn On Virtualization Based Security", set it to "Disabled"

Turn off hypervisor in the boot loader: in PowerShell as Administrator, type

bcdedit /set hypervisorlaunchtype off

Disable DeviceGuard: run the "Registry Editor" applet and navigate to Computer > HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SYSTEM > CurrentControlSet > Control > DeviceGuard group. set the "EnableVirtualizationBasedSecurity" to 0, set "RequireMicrosoftSignedBootChain" to 0. Then navigate further to ... Scenarios > HyperVisorEnforcedCodeIntegrity and set "Enabled" to 0

Disable Memory Integrity: in the Settings Applet, navigate to Update & Security > Windows Security > Device Security > Core Isolation. Turn the Memory Integrity option "Off"

However VT-X and Virtualization is still not working for me. What do I miss?

Thank you very much for your help!

Answer 3

JohnnyP86 1

I just had a 1 hour session with Microsoft Support to solve this issue.
The Intel virtualization features could not be enabled, however after updating the driver-set, virtualization works with VirtualBox runs way more smoothly:

Update to:
SurfacePro8_Win11_22000_22.041.6912.0
(download link: https://download.microsoft.com/download/9/1/3/9133dbd3-799a-4766-bb9e-f67697159c02/SurfacePro8_Win11_22000_22.041.6912.0.msi)

However, it seems that VirtualBox is generally not (yet?) supported on Windows 11. Therefore these kind of issues continue to be unresolved.

All the best.

LW7SH 1 Reputation point

2022-07-05T17:45:21.837+00:00

Can you tell us all the changes you've made, the patch changed nothing for me
TonkleChicken 1 Reputation point

2022-07-05T21:47:08.607+00:00

I tried the same and no effect.

I later discovered that Virtualbox is not yet supported in Windows 11, and that many others had this same problem

I then installed Vmware Workstation (player is OK too) and migrated my VirtualBox VMs to it and all is super fast now!

Answer 4

TonkleChicken 1

I have the same problem whereby my new Surface Pro 8 does not seem to have VT-x enabled on it (Nothing in the UEFI/BIOS settings too).

This is impacting both VirtualBox and VMWare Player for me. (I do not have Hyper-V Installed)

I will give that patch a try

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Does Surface Pro 8 support VT-x (Virtualization Technology) to run VirtualBox?

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