The title says that this tutorial is specific to Lenovo hosts, but the methodology used here applies universally. Part 2: Enabling hardware virtualization in the system BIOSįor this part of the tutorial I will be using the Lenovo BIOS designed for the Thinkpad laptops. To remove an extension, click on the red X right below that.įind the file for the extension pack in your filesystem and click Open, then agree to the License Agreement and wait for it to install.Ĭongratulations! You now have the software needed to run 64-bit guests in VirtualBox. To add an extension, click on the green plus sign on the right. In my case I already have the VirtualBox Extension Pack installed, but it’s not currently working. This will bring up a window that looks like this: Once the package is fully downloaded, go into your VirtualBox control panel, go to the File menu, and select Preferences. You will see something that looks like this:Ĭlick on the second list item (underlined) and follow the directions. To install the VirtualBox Extension Pack, go to the following URL:

Part 1: Installing the VirtualBox Extension Pack In this tutorial I will walk you through both the installation of the extension pack and the enabling of hardware virtualization, using a VirtualBox installation running on a Windows 7 host with a Lenovo BIOS. Assuming you have a 64-bit CPU, hardware virtualization will allow you to virtualize the 64-bit extensions to run 64-bit guests.

Hardware virtualization is a special kind of built-in hypervisor support that’s built into most modern CPUs. First, you need to install the VirtualBox Extension Pack, and then you need to go into your BIOS and enable hardware virtualization. In order to get it to support 64-bit guests, there are a couple extra steps you need to take. This is because VirtualBox has no native support for 64-bit operating systems.

If you’ve ever tried to run a 64-bit guest in VirtualBox, you may have found that there are no 64-bit options available, only 32-bit options.

No 64 bit options virtualbox