Recently I started having an issue with VT-x on my Windows 10 running on HP ThinkPad. I was using Oracle VirtualBox to run some VMs on it before and VT-x was enabled in BIOS and was working fine.

I started getting VT-x is not available error every time I was trying to start any of my VMs.

That started happening after I installed Docker on my machine

so I tried uninstalling it and rebooting. Didn’t help.

I checked BIOS settings and it says VT-x is enabled .

There were no hardware changes and the only software change was installing/uninstalling Docker.

There are three common culprits for this type of error:

• VT-x is not enabled in the BIOS
• The CPU doesn’t support VT-x
• Hyper-V virtualization is enabled in Windows

There are three common culprits for the type of error the user is seeing:

• VT-x is not enabled in the BIOS
• The CPU doesn’t support VT-x
• Hyper-V virtualization is enabled in Windows

So, we are going to check each of these points and fix it.

Afterwards, reboot the PC and try VirtualBox again. It should then work fine. I hope 🙂

How to check if Intel Virtualization is enabled without going to BIOS in Windows 10

Right-click Start > Run > msinfo32

The first page shows whether virtualization is enabled in BIOS (firmware).

How to check if the CPU support VT-x

Easiest option- Check your Task Manager

If you have Windows 10 or Windows 8 operating system, the easiest way to check is by opening up Task Manager->Performance Tab. You should see Virtualization as shown in the below screenshot. If it is enabled, it means that your CPU supports Virtualization and is currently enabled in BIOS.

If it shows disabled, you need to enable it in BIOS. After that, If you still don’t see virtualization, it means that your CPU does not support virtualization.

How to disable Hyper-V virtualization in window (with GUI)

Right-click Start > Run > OptionalFeatures.exe

You should see a list of Windows features as shown in the below screenshot. Look for “Hyper-V” and uncheck it.

But sometime, disable Hyper-V virtualization, that way ist not enough, and we need to make instead the following step:

open a command prompt as administrator and run the following command:

dism.exe /Online /Disable-Feature:Microsoft-Hyper-V

Afterwards, reboot the PC and try VirtualBox again. It should work perfect now.