Virtual PC Guy's Blog

-- Ben Armstrong, Virtualization Program Manager

Talking about core virtualization at Microsoft (Hyper-V, Virtual PC and Virtual Server).

Creating a "no hypervisor" boot entry

Creating a "no hypervisor" boot entry

  • Comments 7

From time to time I want to run Virtual PC / Virtual Server on my Hyper-V system.  While I can do this with the hypervisor running, the result is that Virtual PC / Virtual Server run quite slowly.  An easy fix for this is to create a second boot entry for my system that starts Windows without starting the hypervisor.  To do this you need to open an administrative command prompt and run:

  1. bcdedit /copy {current} /d "Microsoft Windows Server 2008 - no hypervisor"

    bcdedit2

    This copies your currently active boot entry (assuming that this is the one you want to copy) and gives the new copy an appropriate description.

  2. bcdedit /set {identifier for the new boot entry (copy from the output of a plain 'bcdedit' command)} hypervisorlaunchtype off

    bcdedit3 

After doing this you can choose whether the hypervisor gets loaded whenever you boot the system.

Cheers,
Ben

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  • Please add 1 and 5 and type the answer here:
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  • When booting the machine with the hyper-v disabled do you get back the ability to enable hibernation/sleep/etc?  Thanks for the tip.

  • Ben, What is your rough estimate of the difference in speed between running a Dos VM with the hypervisor on or off?

  • disabling Hyper-v using this method, does not bring back hibernate/sleep. :(

    powercfg -hibernate on

    Hibernation failed with the following error: The request is not supported.

    The following items are preventing hibernation on this system.

           An internal system component has disabled hibernation.

  • Virtual PC or Virtual Server will run faster because they will use Pacifica/vanderpool only if hyperv is not used?

  • I've tried this with a server and remote access via Virtual Server Administration Web or RDP is really really slow.

    The RDP is connection usually dropped with an error about encryption.

    I have stopped started with the no hypervisor option described in this bild and stiopped all Hyper-V services.

    Locally the machine is not slow.

  • To answer questions:

    No - this will not enable sleep / hibernate.

    Yes - this will make Virtual PC / Virtual Server run faster on the system.

    Cheers,

    Ben

  • Thank you for the inforamtion, very useful.

    Does this cause any issues with Windows Update? Since making the change I have noticed that when rebooting after a Windows Update, the machine goes into a perpetual reboot loop. Don't know if it is related but don't know how to diagnose the issue.

    Any help is appreciated!

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