How to enable VT when it does not appear in latest BIOS?

Question

I have Ausa Nova p20 with upgraded CPU (E6420) running Windows 7.

The latest BIOS I found is AMI 0501 but I can't find out how to enable VT. Is there another way?

Answer 1

I have just recently done this with my VAIO laptop. It required manually changing the value of a certain register. For a Phoenix BIOS this can be done with a tool called "symcmos". The method I used is described in this tutorial:

http://readmystuff.wordpress.com/2009/09/18/how-to-enable-hardware-virtualization-for-a-sony-vaio-vgn-ar41s/

Unfortunately these probably won't be directly applicable to your problem since I guess you have a different BIOS and hardware. The trickiest part is probably knowing which register you have to modify. But maybe you're lucky and someone has already done this for your hardware, too. Just google for your computer model/BIOS version combined with the right keywords.

Answer 2

If this is not enabled by default (unfortunately, almost never is) you cannot enable it otherwise.

Some manufacturers just decided not to surface VT support existing in CPU. Some do it because they lack motherboard support but for most of them it is just stupid product management decision.

In any case, if you cannot find it in BIOS there is nothing you can do.

Answer 3

It would be possible if:

• someone reverse engineered the chipset of this motherboard to find out how to make it enable VT (it is difficult: chipsets appear on the PCI bus but some functions can be made to "disappear" after a register is written to, preventing messing with them after the BIOS is done.)
• you got an old standard PCI (not PCI-e) NIC with an empty EEPROM socket, created your own x86-assembly "option ROM" image that performs those necessary steps to enable VT, and install the NIC with such a programmed EEPROM installed.

Not sure to what extent the chipset is involved in enabling VT.

I could be wrong about this.