Heads up re VM's & Intel 64bit Processors

[Liam Proven]

On Sat, Mar 20, 2010 at 6:23 PM, NoOp <glgxg at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> On 03/20/2010 05:19 AM, Liam Proven wrote:
>
>>> On Saturday 20,March,2010 12:01 PM, NoOp wrote:
> ...
>>>> Next stop; ark.intel.com&  what do I find... the T4300 is indeed a 64bit
>>>> processor, *but* it doesn't support VT-x or Hyperthreading!
>>>>
>>>
>>> Those are the two reasons why I keep my virtualization laptop for work
>>> travel always an Athlon 64X2 based one.
>>> Because buying the Intel one having the risk of either the processor
>>> does not support VT-x or there is no option to enable it in the BIOS.
>>>
>>> However I consider myself quite lucky when I was given a Fujitsu S6520.
>>> Initially it cannot enable the BIOS, but after BIOS upgrade, then I can
>>> enable the VT-x.
>>
>> Sadly no guarantee. My desktop is an AMD - Athlon X2 64 4400+, one of
>> the last, best, fastest Socket 939 chips there were. The CPU supports
>> AMD-V but there is no option to enable it in the BIOS so VirtualBox
>> has to do without.
>>
>> The BIOS is the latest one & as it's a 5YO motherboard, I expect no
>> further upgrades. I had to upgrade it when I got it a few months back
>> just to get the M/B to recognise 4GB of RAM - its ~2006/2007 BIOS only
>> saw 3¼GB, i.e., the 32-bit ceiling.
>
>
> When you next go shopping, you might want to burn a copy of the .iso
> from this article and take with you. You can boot up the machine & it
> will test to see if VT-x is working, or can be enabled:
>
> http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-8978
> [Verifying that Intel VT-x is Enabled and Locked at Boot]
>  Attachments:
>    * vt.iso (538.0 K)
> (bottom of the article)

Unfortunately, "going shopping" is not an option. I can't afford any
new kit. This machine was given to me, dead, by a friend; I merely
fixed it up by replacing hard disks & optical drives from my spares
pile, graphics card from a different friend, RAM from my old PC, and a
new heatsink & fan from eBay.

I'm lumbered with it, as it were. I'm very grateful for it - it's
dramatically more powerful than my old machine - but I need to work
around its limitations as-is.

If VT is something that can be enabled or disabled by the system BIOS,
it seems a little odd to me that it can't be re-enabled or patched
around somehow in software, but that seems to be just how it is.

-- 
Liam Proven • Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven
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