VMs & Hypervisors

Virtual Machines

Running Hedge apps in a VM is a Pro feature. During activation, you may encounter this error: No virtual machine activations allowed. This means you have a regular license or a Pro license that hasn't yet been enabled to allow for VM activations. VM enablement is done on an opt-in basis.

If you have a regular license and need VM activations, first upgrade your license in the License Manager. Then, reach out.

Already on a Pro license? Reach out.

Hypervisors

This only concerns Windows users.

Because Windows can't discern between an app running natively or in a VM, activating a license or trial of a Hedge product on a machine with VM or Hypervisor capabilities will result in an error:

No virtual machine activations allowed. It seems like you are running inside a virtual machine, which is not allowed.

If you're not running our apps in a VM, then a Hypervisor process must be active. Knowing either of these is active may surprise you since you may not have installed or started these yourself. Some OEM brand PCs activate this out of the box.

Indeed, this also means a clean Windows installation might have a Hypervisor enabled without telling you so. It's perfectly fine to disable this functionality on your Windows machine.

Disabling VM and Hypervisor Functionality

To activate a regular license or trial, you’ll need to disable any-and-all Hypervisor (Hyper-V) and Virtual Machine features in Windows. Here’s how:

1. In Windows, search for Turn Windows features on or off, then launch it.

2. Disable all of the following options:

3. Once you disable those options, restart Windows.

You must restart Windows after disabling these features, whether Windows prompts you or not.

4. After Windows restarts, relaunch the app, start your trial or activate the app with your license key, and your app should be ready to use.

Additional Steps

Can't use your Hedge app just yet? Try the next steps one by one, and verify after each step if that's sufficient.

At this stage, it's likely cheaper to upgrade to a Pro license instead of trying to remove the ballast from your system, as it's nested pretty deep and will cost you considerable time moving forward.

5. Click the "Start button" then type cmd.

Select Command Prompt, then Run as administrator. If a User Account Control window asks you to proceed, click Yes.

A command prompt window should appear with this title bar: Administrator: Command Prompt.

Copy/paste the following command, then press Enter:

bcdedit /set hypervisorlaunchtype off

If this commands reports The operation completed successfully., restart Windows, relaunch the app, start your trial or activate the app with your license key, and your app should be ready to use.

6. You may need to enter your PC's BIOS setup utility to disable one or more virtualization and hypervisor settings.

Exercise caution when modifying your PC's BIOS settings. Hedge is not responsible for any unexpected results that may occur from experimenting with your PC's BIOS settings.

Since BIOS settings differ from PC manufacturer to PC manufacturer, here's a list of possible BIOS settings that may be telling Windows you're using it inside a virtual machine or running under a hypervisor:

We recommend you disable one BIOS setting at a time in the order of possible settings listed. Once you disable a setting, restart your PC, relaunch your Hedge app, then retry activating it. If your app still won't activate, disable another BIOS setting, restart your PC, then repeat the remaining steps until your Hedge app activates.

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