[Solved] AMD-V Is Disabled In The BIOS Error

AMD-V is AMD’s hardware virtualization technology. If this feature is disabled in the BIOS or conflicting technologies like Hyper-V are enabled, you’ll encounter the AMD-V is disabled in the BIOS error.

The CPU flag for AMD-V is SVM (Secure Virtual Machine). The BIOS setting goes by the same name and you’ll find it in the CPU Features section. In most cases, enabling SVM will resolve this error.

Disabling other virtualization technologies like Hyper-V and adjusting your VM configs can also help. But you usually won’t have to resort to these as enabling SVM will mostly do the trick for you.

Enable AMD-V from the BIOS

All Zen-based AMD processors (Ryzen 1000 and newer) support AMD-V. So, you don’t need to worry about whether your system supports AMD-V.

Instead, focus on finding the SVM setting. It’ll be located in different places depending on the motherboard and BIOS UI.

1. Turn on or restart your PC and press the BIOS key (Function keys or Del) on the POST screen.
2. In the BIOS, press the key shown on the screen to switch to Advanced Mode.
   
3. Look for the SVM setting:
   • ASUS – Advanced > CPU Configuration
   • MSI – OC > Advanced CPU Configuration
   • Gigabyte – Tweaker > Advanced CPU Settings
   • ASRock – Advanced > CPU Configuration
4. Set SVM to Enabled. Then, press F10 to save the changes and exit the BIOS.
   
5. After restarting, try running the VM. It should work smoothly now.

Disable Hyper-V

Windows includes some native virtualization features like Hyper-V that rely on AMD-V. You must disable these to ensure other hypervisors like VMware and VirtualBox can run properly. 

1. Press Win + R, type optionalfeatures, and press Enter.
   
2. Uncheck the following features and press OK:
   • Hyper-V
   • Virtual Machine Platform
   • Windows Hypervisor Platform
   • Windows Subsystem For Linux
3. Check if the VM boots properly now.

Reduce VM Cores to 1

When hardware virtualization (AMD-V) is disabled, trying to run multicore VMs will cause this error. In this case, check if reducing the VM cores to 1 helps.

On Oracle VirtualBox,

1. Select the VM from the left pane and click on Settings.
2. Switch to the System tab and click on Processor.
3. Change the no. of CPU cores assigned to 1 here and press OK.
   
4. Close the Settings window. On the home page, press Start to launch the VM.
   

On VMWare Workstation,

1. Select the VM from the left pane and click on Edit Virtual Machine Settings.
   
2. In the Hardware tab, click on Processors. Assign a single core to the VM and press OK.
   
3. On the home page, select the VM and press Power on this virtual machine.

Note: Limiting your VM to a single core can cause a bottleneck in some scenarios. So, while this method works for troubleshooting, I recommend enabling AMD-V as the best long-term solution.

Configure PAE/NX Setting (VirtualBox)

32-bit architecture only supports a max of 4 GB memory, and the same is true for VMs. If excessive memory is the reason for this error, you have two ways to fix things.

You can allocate 3584 MB or lower RAM to your VM. But again, this is likely to cause a bottleneck and negatively affect performance. Instead, I recommend enabling PAE/NX, which will allow you to allocate up to 64 GB of RAM.

1. Launch VirtualBox and select your VM.
2. Click on Settings > System > Processor.
3. Enable PAE/NX and click OK.
   
4. Check if you can run the VM without the error now.