Windows – Cannot start Hyper-V on MacBook in Bootcamp but can in Parallels

boot-camphyper-vmacoswindows 8

I am running Mavericks on a late 2013 model MacBook Pro 13" Retina (Intel i5 chip) and have installed Windows 8.1 into a bootcamp partition. Under Bootcamp, an attempt to start a VM in Hyper-V Manager results in the error message that the VM "could not be started because the hypervisor is not running."

Per Hyper-V Service Manager, the service is started, and I've eliminated the three potential causes provided in the details of the above error dialog box, namely:

  1. Hardware supports virtualization – it's an i5 and I ran coreinfo to confirm that SLAT is available.
  2. BIOS configuration – for a Mac, there's no option to tweak BIOS-type settings, but HW virtualization is supposedly enabled by default.
  3. BCD configuration issues – I checked bcdedit and the hypervisorlaunchtype setting is auto, but reset it and restarted just to be sure.

Additionally, I have set up Parallels 9 to used the Windows 8 bootcamp partition, and when I launch into Parallels, I have no problem setting up and starting a VM. Those same VMs that I've created there, then fail to launch if I restart the machine directly into bootcamp.

What am I missing?

Best Answer

This seems to have something to do with how you boot the Windows partition.

https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/122071/88382 suggests rebooting into OS X, choosing BOOTCAMP from the Startup control panel, and then booting into Windows. This enabled virtualization on my machine. (I had previously booted into Windows using the Boot Camp Assistant, and virtualization was disabled.)

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