Virtual machine software allows us to run different operating systems on the same physical machine, such as your personal computer, a remote server, a cloud server in datacenter. Some of the best virtual machine software programs are VMware Workstation, Oracle VM VirtualBox, Parallels Desktop. If you use a recent version of Windows, you have another great option, Hyper-V. Microsoft includes Hyper-V Manager for free and installed only in supported versions of Windows, the professional, enterprise, or academic versions of Windows 10 and 11. It is not available on Windows 10 Home. Also Hyper-V is built into Windows as an optional feature, so you can not download Hyper-V on other Windows versions if they are not natively supported.
Hyper-V can be enabled in many ways including using the classic control panel, PowerShell or using the Deployment Imaging Servicing and Management tool (DISM). In this post, we will show you the quick steps to install Hyper-V on Windows 11 from the Windows control panel.
On your PC which is running on the latest Windows 11, you can find various buttons from the taskbar at the bottom, including Start, Search, Task View, Widgets, Chat, File Explorer, Edge, Store, etc. Click the Search button, type ‘turn windows features on‘ (without the quotes), the Turn Windows features on or off option should come out. Click to open Windows Features in a new window, scroll to find Hyper-V, click the checkbox to select it. Expand this option and make sure options beneath it are all selected, such as Hyper-V GUI Management Tools, Hyper-V Module for Windows PowerShell, Hyper-V Platform, Hyper-V Hypervvisor, Hyper-V Services. Hit OK button to install Hyper-V on Windows 11.
If you found the Hyper-V some option is greyed out and you can’t select or enable it, you’ll need to enable virtualization technology in your PC’s BIOS/UEFI settings menu. The steps for this will vary across different manufacturers.
Once Windows completed the downloading of Hyper-V on Windows 11, you will have to reboot your PC to finish the installation of Hyper-V on Windows 11 system.