How to Disable Hyper-V in Windows 10

While Hyper-V is a useful feature that comes in-built with Windows allowing users to run multiple virtual operating systems on the same machine, things can get complicated when other virtualization tools come into play. Popular tools such as VMware or VirtualBox may have compatibility issues with this default Windows feature. Even though Hyper-V can be used to virtualize Windows machines, most of the users like to use third-party tools that come with way more features than the default method. So, there is no wonder why they want to disable Hyper-V while using other third-party tools. This is what we are going to discuss in this article.

Check if Hyper-V is Active

Before you can disable Hyper-V and make it the suspect of the issues you are facing with other virtual machine tools, you should make sure that it is actually enabled on your device. You cannot disable something that isn’t running. To make sure that Hyper-V is running on your OS, follow these steps:

1. Click on the start menu search box.
2. Type in msinfo32.exe.
3. Click on the System Information option. It will take you to the system information window where you can see all of your system details.
4. In the System Summary, look for an entry that says “A hypervisor has been detected. Features required for Hyper-V will not be displayed.”

If you can find that entry in your System Summary, that means Hyper-V is enabled on your OS. And you can move to the following section to disable it.

Disable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName Microsoft-Hyper-V-Hypervisor

Steps to Disable Hyper-V

Once you confirm that Hyper-V is active on your Windows 10 machine, you can disable it by following these steps:

1. Click on the Start menu search box again.
2. Type Control Panel and choose the control panel option that shows up.
3. In the control panel, click on Programs and Features.
4. Then Turn Windows features on or off. It will open a new window where you can control different Windows features.
5. Scroll down and find the section called Hyper-V. Expand it, and then also expand its sub-directory called Hyper-V Platform.
6. Under that, you will see an option Hyper-V Hypervisor which is what you have to uncheck to disable the Hyper-V feature.
7. After unchecking the Hyper-V Hypervisor option, click on OK to save the changes.

That’s all, you have successfully disabled Hyper-V on your Windows machine. If it was the troublemaker, it will no longer cause issues with your favorite virtualization software.