InsydeH2O Hardware Virtualization

I'm pretty sure I know the answer, but I wanted to go ahead and ask.

Has anyone figured out how to enable hardware virtualization yet for the InsydeH2O BIOS? I use Virtual PC heavily for work and need this feature.

TIA

 

you won't be able to use x64 vms. 32bit vms will work. Turns out theres no reason to disable vt other than to be pricks. Logged many tickets with sony, they don't care.

 

As best as I can tell you won't be able to run the new Windows Virtual PC for Windows 7 either, as it seems to require VT.

 

you might wanna try this thread ...

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=189228

 

Its absurd how Sony is taking this sort of a rigid stance when it comes to VT.

Why do they wanna disable a particular feature just for the heck of it and causing so much grief to customers?

 

In short, support. They don't have to teach their phone drones how to answer questions about what the VT-x option in the BIOS does.
Earlier models could have both CPUs that did support VT-x and CPUs that didn't. If someone put a VT-x incapable CPU into a machine where VT-x was turned on in the BIOS, it wouldn't work. So instead of solving the problem, Sony circumvented it by hard-disabling VT-x. And now it's become an established practice, which are always hard to get changed in big corporations. And Sony is less flexible than most, ruled as it is by reptiles in business suits who don't understand the technology they sell. They used to promote people from the floor. That was back when Sony was great. Now they hire MBAs. And are in danger of going GM.

 

IMO the support aspect doesn't even add up. It should be an option like every other vendor, not this "we know better" attitude.

 

Igor Levicki code a tool to enable VT on Vaio with EFI bios. You can find it here. I didn't try it yet, so can't say does it work or not.

 

The fix for the Phoenix BIOS models (SZ, FZ,TZ..) will not work for the Z and neither will the fix that Igor came up for the FW,AW,SR models that use an AMI Aptio BIOS.

There is no fix as of yet for the Z owners (i'm not sure what BIOS the CS and TT use).

 

If it was a support thing then simply saying, "That's unsupported" would have worked just fine for me. I need this for my job, the reason that I bought this business computer.

Ugh.

I'm going to waste my breath and send an e-mail off to Sony (knowing that it's not going to do any good), and keep my eyes peeled in the mean time.

 

The only Sony VAIO notebook currently that has VT support out of the box is their 15.4" BZ series. It also uses the InsydeH2O BIOS, but thankfully is not as locked down as the Z series.

 

That's a step in the right direction. Hopefully someone can figure out how to shove the BIOS onto the Z model.

 

Considering no one has done it since the Z has been out - and not for lack of trying - doubt it's going to happen. Other laptops which use the same vendor's EFI are having the same problems and no one has sorted it out.

It's what has driven me to another laptop.

 

I was bored and decided to chat with the "tech support" (their words, not mine) from Sony. I did get this:

Me> Will this be enabled soon?
Bret_> [name], we are in the process of enabling the feature in VAIO Computers. The information will be available only after the release of the same.
Me> So this could be weeks, months or years?
Bret_> [name], this feature will enabled soon and the information will be updated on the Website.

 

If I understand you correctly, the solution is quite simple. When you first your computer, go into the BIOS setup. Under configuration there is a hardware virtualization option that is disabled by default. Theoretically all you should have to do is enable it and save when you exit.

 

This thread is old. Only the recent (like bios updates since september) has Virtualisation option.

When this thread was started, and discussed, virtualisation did not show up in bios screen, and Sony had no plans to allow enabling of it. But after many complaints sony decided to do it for Windows 7.