Windows Phone Emulator error, Hyper-V components not running, Windows 8.1 hosted in Windows Azure

Question

Environment:

Windows 8.1 Enterprise 64-bit hosted in Windows Azure
Visual Studio Ultimate 2013 (Update 2)

I get the following error when trying to run a very simple phone app. I know MS says a VM-within-a-VM environment isn't supported, but I know it can work. Has anyone had success with this? Any help is greatly appreciated.

Windows Phone Emulator

The Windows Phone Emulator wasn't able to ensure the virtual machine was running:

Something happened while starting a virtual machine: 'Emulator WVGA 512 MB.' failed to start.
(Virtual machine ID CADD6546-129A-4683-9A2D-52EAE777E888)

The Virtual Machine Management Service failed to start the virtual machine 'Emulator WVGA 512 MB.'
because one of the Hyper-V components is not running
(Virtual machine ID CADD6546-129A-4683-9A2D-52EAE777E888).

Prior to seeing the error, the emulator emits the on-screen messages:

Loading ... 

The Windows Phone OS is starting ...

And then the error. Of all the Hyper-V services available, the Hyper-V Virtual Machine Management service is the only one which is running.

Thanks,

Chris

Distress

Azure will enable nested virtualization (and hyperthreading) in Dv3 and Ev3 VMs. Once released, using these VMs should allow you to run the Windows Phone Emulator without a problem. Corey Sanders has a quick video showing a demo. – Tremolite

Answer 1

"You cannot host it in Azure. It needs to be a physical machine." -- Jeff Sanders (MSFT)

Constantin

Answer 2

I had the same issue with Visual Studio running on windows 8.1 in vmware player What I had to do to solve the problem was this :

Tick the box "Virtualize Intel VT-x/EPT or AMD-V/RVI" in the processor settings of your VM

Add the line "hypervisor.cpuid.v0 = FALSE" in the file "Windows 8 x64.vmx" (add it between line 5 and 6. Not sure this matters, but at this line I'm sure it works)

Should be working fine

Headfirst

Didn't work for me (admittedly on windows 10 on vmware), if I modify the vmx file, I get the 'Check the computer's BIOS' error :( – Nettle

Doh! Have to select Hyper-V as the OS (in vmware->Manage->Settings->Options when VM is powered down): youtube.com/watch?v=rBPPkhkSHRU (note: I haven't tried this in W10, I dropped back down to W8.1) – Nettle

Answer 3

Florian.C's answer got me on the right track to get the emulator working correctly in VMware Fusion on my MacBook Pro. In Fusion, the settings are under the "Processors & Memory" section. You have to open the "Advanced" section at the bottom and check the "Enable hypervisor applications for this virtual machine". Once that was done, I had to also open the .vmx file and add the "hypervisor.cpuid.v0 = "FALSE"" line. Originally I copied and pasted from SO and the VM threw an error when I booted it. It turns out the " I added around FALSE were not normal quotes. Once I fixed that, the VM booted and the emulator ran just fine under Fusion. Thanks for the great info!

Marguerita