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-- Ben Armstrong, Virtualization Program Manager

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Creating a "no hypervisor" boot entry

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

Published Monday, April 14, 2008 4:01 PM by Virtual PC Guy
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Comments

# re: Creating a "no hypervisor" boot entry

When booting the machine with the hyper-v disabled do you get back the ability to enable hibernation/sleep/etc?  Thanks for the tip.

Monday, April 14, 2008 10:35 PM by gozer

# re: Creating a "no hypervisor" boot entry

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

Tuesday, April 15, 2008 6:06 PM by Wesley

# re: Creating a "no hypervisor" boot entry

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.

Tuesday, April 15, 2008 9:31 PM by Brent

# re: Creating a "no hypervisor" boot entry

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

Thursday, April 17, 2008 1:34 PM by Gilles Vollant

# re: Creating a "no hypervisor" boot entry

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.

Thursday, April 24, 2008 4:13 AM by Jack

# re: Creating a "no hypervisor" boot entry

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

Wednesday, May 07, 2008 5:05 PM by Virtual PC Guy
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