How to Enable & Install Hyper-V in Windows 11 Pro and Home Editions

If you’ve recently upgraded to Windows 11 Pro or Home and don’t know how to install and enable Hyper-V then you’re at the right place. Meanwhile, Microsoft released Windows 11 as an Insider Preview, and the easiest method to install Windows 11 without jeopardizing your primary work PC is to use Hyper-V Manager. So, in this guide, you’ll learn how to enable or install Hyper-V Manager in Windows 11 Pro and Windows 11 Home editions.

What’s Hyper-V Manager?

Hyper-V is a Microsoft virtualization software that enables users to build virtual computer environments, run different operating systems, and manage them all from a single physical server. Hardware virtualization is provided by Hyper-V. Virtualize whole hardware components like hard discs, RAM, and network switches with Hyper-V.

Hypervisors are a term used to describe virtualization. Hyper-V, VMware’s ESXi, VSphere, XenServer (Citrix), KVM Open Source Hypervisor, and RHEV are just a few of the hypervisors available. Microsoft’s version is called Hyper-V, and it comes in three versions:

1. Hyper-V for Windows Servers

2. Hyper-V Servers

3. Hyper-V on Windows 10

You can find Hyper-V as an optional feature on Windows 11 Pro, Enterprise, and Education editions. To check which edition of Windows you have, simply go to Settings, then navigate to System and select About. Look for the Windows specifications section to locate your Windows edition.

Why Do I Need Hyper-V?

There are many reasons to use Hyper-V and here are some of the reasons:

• If your work requires you to operate multiple OS, Hyper-V would help create virtual machines and install different OS on each.
• You can run most of the software which doesn’t run on the current OS, by installing the suitable one.
• If you design software, you can test them all on the same computer by installing a different OS.

Install Hyper-V on Windows 11 Pro

Hyper-V is available on Windows 11 Pro edition; you can enable the Hyper-V feature by Turn on or off the Windows feature. Here’s how it is done:

Step 1. Click the Start menu and then search for Turn Windows features on or off. Open it.

Turn Windows features on or off

Step 2. Once the Windows Features pane opens, scroll down and select the box next to Hyper-V and sub boxes Hyper-V Management Tools and Hyper-V Platform. Make sure these three boxes are checked, then click OK.

Enable Hyper-V Windows 11 Pro

Step 3. Wait for a moment.

Step 4. Once installed, reboot your computer.

Step 5. Once you reboot, the Hyper-V feature should be enabled, and you can start creating virtual machines to run other operating systems on. Simply search Hyper-V Manager and it should be available.

Install Hyper-V on Windows 11 Home

Windows 11 Home editions, like Windows 10 Home, are feature-limited, with few options such as Domain Join, Group Policy Management, BitLocker, Remote Desktop, Device Guard, Hyper-V, and so on.

So, here’s how you can install Hyper-V on Windows 11 Home:

Step 1. Open Notepad.

Open Notepad

Step 2. Click here and then copy the code.

Step 3. When pasted, click the File tab and select Save as.

Save as

Step 4. Save the Notepad file as Hyper-V.bat on the Desktop.

Save as .bat file

Step 5. Now Right-click on the bat file and choose Run as administrator.

Run as administrator

Step 6. The UAC prompt will then appear. When you click Yes, you will be presented with a command prompt that will allow you to run the script. This is going to take some time.

Step 6. Once the script is executed successfully, you will get the confirmation message to restart the system, Press Y to restart. 

Press Y to restart

Step 7. Hyper-V should automatically be installed, and you can find it by searching in the Start menu. It’ll be called Hyper-V Manager.

Hyper-V on Windows 11 Home

That’s about all you need to know to install Hyper-V on Windows 11 Home and Windows 11 Pro. This guide also works for Windows 10. You may use Hyper-V to build virtual machines from your own ISO files, or you can use one of Microsoft’s choices. In fact, the firm provides the opportunity to construct an Ubuntu virtual computer straight out of the box. Because virtual machines are permanent unless you want to destroy them, they require different apps than Windows Sandbox.

Related Posts:

• How to Install Windows 11 on Hyper-V in Windows 10

• How to Manually Install Hyper-V on Windows 10 Home