How to enable Hyper-V on Windows 8 and Windows 8.1

If you know what virtualization is and do make use of it for practical or educational purposes, the great news is that the latest client operating system from Microsoft, Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 has Hyper-V, the same virtualization engine used in Microsoft Server operating systems such as Windows Server 2012 R2.

First of all you need to check whether your PC or laptop has the required features to support Client Hyper-V.

Prerequisites 

• 64bit processor with Second Level Address Translation (SLAT)
• BIOS-level Hardware Virtualization support

To check whether your machine supports above features 

Go to Run and type msinfo32 and hit enter

System Information

scroll down on System Summary tab and at the very bottom you can see if these features are supported and enabled.

If the Hyper-V - Virtualization Enabled in Firmware has it's value as "No", it is probably disabled in your BIOS settings. 

The actual name and the location of the setting may differ with the model of the PC (mine is HP ProBook 4540s and it shows as below)

Virtualization Technology (VTx) Settings

• 64bit operating system of Windows 8 (or 8.1) Pro or Enterprise
• 4GB or RAM (Minimum)

You can check these by going to System Properties

System Properties

Steps

Now that you are certain your machine and the operating system is supported

1. Go to Control Panel
2. Click Programs and Features
3. Click Turn Windows Features on or off

Windows Features

The Feature window will pop up and all you have to do is put the tick on Hyper-V (sub components will be selected automatically) and click OK. 

After a restart, The Hyper-V Manager will appear on the start screen.

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