Installing Windows 8 Client Hyper-V inside VMware Workstation/Fusion/ESX

Typically I used to try latest version of Windows on VMWare Player, Workstation or VirtualBox. Recently I was trying to set up a Windows Phone 8.0 development environment inside a VMWare virtual machine.

I tried to enable Hyper-V platform components in my Windows 8.1 Preview Virtual machine. It shows an error.

Hyper-V cannot be installed: A hypervisor is already running

• Unable to use Hyper-V platform inside a Windows 8 virtual machine
• When trying to enable/install Hyper-V in a Windows 8 virtual machine, you will see the above error:

SOLUTION:

Solution for this problem is to edit your VMware Virtual Machine configuration(.vmx) file in your Windows 8 Virtual machine stored location.

• Switch off/Shutdown your VMware virtual machine
• Edit the corresponding .vmx file
• Append the following entries to the vmx file (verify entry if already exists)

hypervisor.cpuid.v0 = “FALSE”
vhv.enable = “TRUE”
mce.enable = “TRUE”

• Save the changes
• Start your Windows 8 VMware Virtual machine
• Now go to Control Panel –> ‘Programs and Features’ –> Turn windows features on or off
• Viola!,  You can now enable ‘Hyper-V Platform’ . Now you can install Windows Phone SDK on your Windows 8 Virtual Machine

VMware Official Knowledgebase Reference Link:

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2044876 

Hope that help you guys with similar problems.