How to enable Virtualization VT-X on VAIO Z laptops Finally

Hi,
I have bought a Vaio VGN-Z21XN/B laptop. I have installed Windows Server 2008 64-bit on it, but I would like to inform me how to enable Virtualization.
Has anyone tried enabling Virtualization on Z series?
Thank you in advance.

UPDATE- 19th July

How to enable VT-X on a Z laptop
see discussion from post 7# on
Use at your own risk
http://feature-enable.blogspot.com/2009/07/enable-vt-on-insydeh2o-based-sony-vaio.html

 

There are threads about this, and also info in the Z owner's thread.

<STRIKE>In short, no, it can not be done at present. Sony has deliberately disabled this for all VAIO PCs -- probably to simplify support and reduce support costs.</STRIKE>

UPDATE: Yes, it can be done now.
You need a USB key formatted with FAT (not exFAT or FAT32). Possibly (untested) an SD or MS card, too.
See top post for more details.

<STRIKE>There are instructions for how to hack the Phoenix bios of some of the other Vaio models, but the Z uses EFI instead of a BIOS, and no-one has of yet figured out how to hack the InsydeH2O EFI. So forget virtualization.</STRIKE>

(Also, Windows Server 2008 is an odd choice for this laptop. It's nowhere near powerful enough to run Active Directory domain controller and the other server specific services of WS2k8 with any reliability. If your intent was to run Hyper-V on it, my advice is to forget it. The best you can do is VMware without virtualization.)

 

BTW, I tried to install Windows Server 2008 R2 which is 64-bit only under VMWare on a Z610Y/B which has Vista Ultimate 64-bit. You get an error both in the VM when trying to install as well as in VMWare itself saying that VT is not enabled so you can't run 64-bit guests ... well, at least Windows Server 2008. I am not trying anything else.

 

Did anyone manage to enable virtualization until now or the limitation at the bios is still a problem?

 

It's still not possible. If you need a laptop to support VT, don't get the Z right now.

 

I have already purchased it, that's why I asked on more time..
Thanks anyway!

 

just follow this guide: http://feature-enable.blogspot.com/

happy enabling VT

Edit: I recommend tsthanos or arth1 put this link to the first row of this thread to make it seen easily by others

 

Is it the same offset for all Zs - Offset: 0x1af?

 

Thanks for the info. Appreciate it.

 

Maybe a way to go through the battery drain and disable some options...

 

i was to enable vt on my z-540 without a problem !!!!!!!!!!!!!! yay!

 

Anyone tested on a Z690??

 

given not all of us are running linux can someone make an iso?

 

can people report their success on this? at least it'll give me more confidence to try it out and not brick my laptop. currently owns a vaio z620 with R3054M3 bios version. thanks.

 

personally i can't see this bricking it. It changes a var that doesn't impact the system, if it actually did cause harm, its a simple reboot and undo and you're fine. I would be interested to enable ahci as mentioned, NCQ should improve disk access marginally.

All i need is an iso and I'll do it on my 690. Right now i don't have the time to get a vm running linux and patch/make the usb stick. Guess it would only take an hour. hmm.

 

Someone should tell FenderP this good news and hope he can still return his R600.

 

You dont need an iso ... just copy the two files on a usb drive and reboot. You dont need to be running Linux.

 

Hi,

Has anyone try on Z790 yet ?
As I notice the Z790 have different chipset from Z690 (Max 8GB Ram vs Max 4GB Ram) so I wounder if there any impact on the latest Z790....

 

Just enabled it on my VAIO TT using same offset 0x1af. Securable now reports VT as "Locked ON" is that what you get with your Z's as well?

 

Z790 doesn't have a different chipset - it's stil Mobile Intel® GM45 Express chipset.

 

where can we find this "sucurable"?

That's what I get after changing the offset 0x25a:

 

Got the same message on my Vaio TT...

 

Wow, exactly what I dreamt to get. Obviously I changed 0x25a offset on my TT now and got exactly the same GREAT!!!!

Securable is here www.grc.com/securable.htm

Thanks Seberg

 

Wow, did the 0x25a as well on my Vaio TT, now I have all the options in BIOS!

 

You guys didn't read all the guide?

 

I wonder what will happen after setting 0x25a. Is it possible to change to IDE mode and install Windows XP without SATA drivers?

 

I did but didn't realize at first that it would unlock the advanced menu in the BIOS. The guide is right in that it allows for too many changes but some could be really useful like the temp the Fan turns on for instance or as the previous poster mentionned put disks in IDE mode for XP install or finally being able to run HDDERASE on my SSD. I hope changing to IDE is supported by the chipset (it should) otherwise!!!

 

Sucurable reports my Z as "YES" for the VT.

 

Now this is a GREAT step forward -- more than just enabling VT-x.

That Sony has disabled this menu in the first place is the real problem - I know of no other manufacturer that dumb down their systems as much as Sony does, basically saying to the paying customers "we think you're too stupid to be allowed to even see these options".

 

Well, I just did it on my Z690, it didnt explode!

 

oh man so tempting...

i dont see the need for enabling VT yet as I'm using Vmware for all my VMs. But there should be significant performance increase in the VMs for enabling VT...

 

The benefit of VT is that you can install a 64-bit OS as a guest system on a VM. You will also be able to install the XP compatibility pack on Win7 which is just a VM but made more transparent.

 

In addition to allowing 64-bit guests, it also gives a speed benefit for 32-bit guests. And yes, it's measurable and even noticeable.

 

Tested and working
I now have all the settings in BIOS and am currently installing a 64-bit OS using VMWare to make sure it works properly

 

euroland z45x
advance menu (0x25a) works fine

Thanks to OP

 

ok, i tried it last night. I put this file EFI app mentioned in the blog into a USB drive, under /EFI/BOOT folder. I tried to boot up my laptop with the usb drive plugged in but i dont get the GRUB message at all. The screen just freezes at the InsydeH2O logo. I tried enabling external device and boot it that way but still doesn't work.

The usb drive is formatted in FAT32 and 32kb allocation unit size. I'm on bios version R3054M3 as well.

Any ideas? Thanks!

 

Which notebook do you have? Did you format your USB drive as FAT32?

 

how did you measure the difference between vt enabled and disabled for 32-bit guests? I did some benchmarks and didn't see any difference...

by the way, what are the effects of enabling vt-d and TXT in the advanced menu?

 

Anyone figure out what all the other options do in the hidden menu?

Any of them worth messing around with?

Just do it, it really seems way more complicated then it is.

 

You could just use google, read up on the different features and find out what they do.

I had a look at the options and had no need to change anything else, although I am tempted to play around with them to see if it affects the battery drain problem.

 

At least it's possible to set SATA controller to IDE mode to install XP/2003 without SATA driver slipstream'ed!

The temperature threshold for fan/cpu throttling is also useful.

Don't touch anything else if you are unsure

 

That's likely your problem right there. Try standard FAT with default allocation size. Remember that the UEFI has to read the drive before any drivers, BIOS emulation or even firmware updates are loaded, so it can only do basics, not custom varieties.

Some people have gotten FAT32 to work, others need FAT16. It may depend on your firmware. But don't mess with allocation sizes or try NTFS or exFAT -- it won't work.

No, that won't work, because this loading occurs BEFORE the "BIOS" (for lack of a better word). The idea is to allow booting a tool here to rescue a bricked computer.

 

Wow thanks alot!

I am using windows 7 and it automatically formats my usb drive with 32kb allocation unit size. I chose to use the 4kb one this time and it works. I have just enabled my advanced bios menu and enabled VT from there.

 

Time a large compile.

make clean
time make -j3 # thumbnail rule: -j followed by number of cores + 1

I also see a positive difference (but not as much) in JavaScript:
http://www2.webkit.org/perf/sunspider-0.9/sunspider.html

Vt-d allows a virtual machine to access hardware directly, e.g. use a network card without going through the bridge mode. It's most useful on stationary PCs where resources can be dedicated to the virtual machine. Then it can provide a huge performance boost.
Depending on the Virtual Machine, it can also allow access to certain devices (like Bluetooth or card readers) that aren't normally available through the emulation layer. Care must be taken, because the guest can then take over devices and block the host OS from using them.

TXT I have no idea.

 

I have the following configuration:
VMWare Workstation 6.5.2
Host OS: Windows Server 2008 Enterprise SP2 32-bit
Guest OS: Ubuntu 6.06 32-bit

I have tried to compile the source code of PostgreSQL using the command

time make

, and got:

Force "Binary Translation" mode:
real 2m55.554s
user 2m10.712s
sys 0m34.878s

Force "VT-x" mode:
real 3m18.680s
user 2m37.130s
sys 0m32.822s

Automatic mode:
real 3m34.216s
user 2m48.543s
sys 0m36.526s

There is no noticeable difference to me at all!

I have also tried Peacekeeper, Sunspider, V8 benchmarks as well, and no difference at all again!

Is there anything trick that I should do to make a difference?

 

Double-check that you actually are running the VM with VT-x.
On the host, grep for "virtual exec" in vmware.log (which normally will be in the same directory as the disk files for the guest).

With VT-x enabled, you should see:

Jul 21 12:34:56.789: vmx| HV Settings: virtual exec = 'hardware'; virtual mmu = 'software'

With VT-x disabled, you should see:

Jul 21 12:34:56.789: vmx| HV Settings: virtual exec = 'software'; virtual mmu = 'software'

Then again, I run VMware Server 2.0.1, which might be different.

 

OK I've done the benchmarks again carefully, and got some results. Each benchmark was run twice to ensure consistency.

VT disabled in bios, force "Binary Translation":
Jul 21 20:16:53.208: vmx| HV Settings: virtual exec = 'software'; virtual mmu = 'software'

Compile PostgreSQL:

real 3m54.795s
user 2m46.506s
sys 0m54.479s


real 3m50.576s
user 2m45.050s
sys 0m52.091s

Peacekeeper:

358
342


VT enabled in bios, force "Binary Translation":
Jul 21 20:21:25.495: vmx| HV Settings: virtual exec = 'dynamic'; virtual mmu = 'software'

Compile PostgreSQL:

real 3m57.134s
user 2m41.090s
sys 0m55.575s

real 3m54.415s
user 2m40.322s
sys 0m53.735s

Peacekeeper:

288
280


VT enabled in bios, force "VT-X":
Jul 21 20:42:53.937: vmx| HV Settings: virtual exec = 'hardware'; virtual mmu = 'software'

Compile PostgreSQL:

real 2m51.950s
user 2m11.012s
sys 0m29.426s

real 2m49.712s
user 2m11.464s
sys 0m27.054s

Peacekeeper:

362
384

All the other conditions above are exactly the same. Hard disk fragmentation can be ignored, as I am running on an Intel X25-E 64G Solid State Disk, which has minimum impact by random access time.

It looks like VT-x indeed improves kernel time significantly (Ring 0?). However there is no big difference on user mode executions.

Interestingly, when I force BT while VT enabled in BIOS, the score of Peacekeeper decreased. Not sure why this affected user mode executions.

 

Dom0, I believe

That's my understanding too. I also see more benefit when running more than one core in the guest. With two cores going full speed, the kernel overhead in linux seems much smaller.

It's my understanding that VMware does some guesses on what's going to be the faster software optimization method based on the CPU info, and with newer CPUs (penryn and some opterons), chooses the wrong one.

Anyhow, in your case, the compile time went down from ~3m 50s to ~2m 50s by enabling VT-x and forcing hardware exec. This is a very significant improvement, won't you say?

 

Yes that's a great improvement on kernel time it's 100% improvement!

I have a noob question (i'm linux noob): how do I enable dual core in guest linux if I only selected one core while installing guest linux? (Ubuntu 6.06)

By the way, I have more questions:

32-bit Host + 32-bit Guest vs 64-bit Host + 32-bit Guest, which guest is faster?

32-bit Host + 64-bit Guest vs 64-bit Host + 64-bit Guest, which guest is faster?

Which linux distribution is best for scientific computing in vmware 6.5.2 on Windows Server 2008 SP2 32-bit?

 

I can't speak for Ubuntu, since I don't use it, but most Linux distros will have SMP support in the default kernel, and all you'll have to do is increase the number in VMware (while the guest is shut down), and it should show up on next boot.
If Ubuntu has two different kernels, you may have to install a SMP kernel from the package manager it uses.

It shouldn't matter a lot -- the VMware binaries for 64-bit host OS are slighly faster, but also use more memory.

Well, there is a distro called Scientific Linux, but that's really just Red Hat Enterprise Linux recompiled as a free version. It tends to lag somewhat behind, and RHEL is already several versions behind Fedora, which it builds on.

Personally, I use Fedora in VMware, and Gentoo for bare metal Linux. I can recommend Fedora, which is both comprehensive and fairly cutting edge -- you need to apply some user patches to VMware tools to get it to work properly, though, because VMware tools isn't really ready for kernel 2.6.29 and newer yet, and VMware's focus has been elsewhere (cloud computing).