VT enabled on my Vaio Z620

I bought a sony vaio Z620D more than a month ago. Before hand, I never knew that VT is disabled and not configurable in the Sony Vaio Z series. So without this knowledge, I proceeded to installl VMWare workstation on my laptop along with a couple of virtual machines, which includes Windows XP, ubuntu desktop client and ubuntu server.

However, not only until recently that after I installed Windows 7 and then proceed to install Windows Virtual PC for the Windows XP mode that I noticed my VT is disabled all the time. So naturally, I went into the bios of my z620 and just as everyone said, the option to enable VT was no where to be found.

This is the part that confuses me the most, I have been working under virtual environment for around a month now and there are no problems. But when I try to run Windows Virtual PC, I'd get this error saying my VT is disabled. To further complicate the matter, I downloaded this program called Securable which checks if my VT is enabled or not. Surprising, it reports that my VT is enabled.

Can anyone explain this to me and are there any Vaio Z owners here that have successfully run virtual machines in the past/current?

 

I may be wrong but given your screenshot, it just tells you that the hardware does support VT (most of us agree on this). However, the thing is that Sony locked this VT functionality through BIOS. Once again, experts out there, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

 

Yes, I noticed that the program does not work in a 64bit OS. It just tells you that your processor has VT but does not tell you if it's turned on or turned off.

But the main question is, how come I am able to run virtual machines in VMWare workstation when my VT is turned off by default?

 

VT allows for 64-bit Guests. Meaning running 64-bit OS as virtuals. Win 7 XP Virtualization REQUIRES VT enabled. The hardware for the Z series has VT but it is disabled in BIOS and there is no way to enable it.

The thing you are confused about is why you've been able to run Virtual Machines thus far, that answer is simple: they've all been 32-bit. If you wanna test it out simply download 64-bit ubuntu desktop/server and try and create a VM using that iso. You will get an error along the line of "This version of blah blah requires 64-bit hardware, your hardware is not compatible."

So to sum up:

VT = 64-bit guest capability (virtuals)
Win 7 XP requires VT
Vaio Zxxx has VT disabled in BIOS
There is currently no way to enable VT in the current BIOS

 

I have to say the thread title is a bit misleading.

Just to add a question, do you need VT for multi-core, or only for virtual multi-core?

 

Also, a 32-bit VM running without VT enabled will run slower.

As an example, compiling Apache on a 32-bit guest machine with 2 cores and VTx enabled dropped the compile time by 40%.
Source: http://www.vmware.com/pdf/Perf_ESX_Intel-EPT-eval.pdf

That's a hefty performance penalty for not having VTx.

 

Only virtual, 64-bit installed OS will run perfect, its only guests that have the issue.

 

Was just about to highlight this myself. Always on the mark Arth1

End of the day, Sony knows better than you.