Wednesday 11 February 2015

Windows 8.1 Hyper-V requires SLAT, is my Intel CPU supported?

I was having a bit of trouble tracking down if there was a suitable CPU upgrade for an old Core 2 E7300 that would support Hyper-V on Windows 8.1. The option to enable it in Programs and Features was greyed out. You an see the message here "Hyper-V cannot be installed: The processor does not have required virtualisation capabilities."

Turns out the CPU needs to support SLAT - Intel call their version, Extended Page Tables (EPT). Its not enough having Intel VT or VT-x or VT-d, it needs to be 'VT-x with EPT'.

Roughly speaking, you need an i3, i5, i7 or equivalent Xeon CPU for EPT support. None of the Core 2 CPUs had it present.

For a more definitive answer, you can bring up a full list of supported CPUs with this search of Intel's ARK library http://ark.intel.com/search/advanced?s=t&ExtendedPageTables=true


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