(Microsoft offers sample instructions for Dell, HP and Lenovo.)įor example, on my Dell, I rebooted and pressed the F12 key as the system restarted to get into the BIOS setup. How you do that varies according to system manufacturer and even model, so check with your manufacturer. You'll need to check your system BIOS to find out whether your hardware virtualization is turned on if it's not, you'll have to turn it on. There's no clear reason why that is, although according to Microsoft, there are potential security issues with hardware virtualization. Hardware virtualization is turned off by default on many PCs. However, even if the CPU does support it, you're still not out of the woods.

If your processor doesn't support either technology, you can stop reading now - you're out of luck. You can use either the AMD Virtualization Compatibility Check Utility (which checks whether your processor supports AMD-V) or the Intel Processor Identification Utility (which is a more comprehensive checking tool). And to make things more confusing, some older, less powerful and less expensive CPUs, such as the Intel Core Duo T2400, do have the technology.īoth Intel and AMD have utilities you can download that will let you know if your PC has that support. However, that's not necessarily the case.Įven some quad-core CPUs, such as the Intel Core 2 Quad Q8400, don't have virtualization technology built in.

You might assume that if you've got a multicore PC, it can certainly do that. XP Mode requires that your CPU be capable of hardware virtualization using either Intel Virtualization Technology (VT) for Intel chips or AMD-V for AMD chips.

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