How to Install Intel Hardware Accelerated Execution Manager (HAXM) on Windows 10

Recently, I have been experimenting with fast virtualization open-source software called Qemu. Before long I discovered that Qemu performs better if we use a hypervisor so that the virtual machines have direct access to the hardware. If you are using Qemu on a Windows host then you can use Intel’s HAXM hypervisor which is acronym for Intel Hardware Accelerated Execution Manager. You can install HAXM in Windows and then you can use it in Qemu and other virtualization software like Android Studio.

Unfortunately, when I tried to install HAXM on my Windows 10 PC, it failed with an error – “The computer does not support Intel Virtualization Technology (VT-x) or it is being exclusively used by Hyper-V. HAXM cannot be installed”. It mentions to disable Hyper-V from Windows Features.

Intel HAXM

If you have also come across the same error then you can proceed using the following steps:

  1. Open an elevated command prompt (Win+X then select Command Prompt (Admin)) and enter the following commands:
    dism.exe /online /Disable-Feature:Microsoft-Hyper-V
    bcdedit /set hypervisorlaunchtype off

    Intel HAXM

  2. Download Device Guard and Credentials Guard readiness tool from https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=53337. Extract its contents to a folder, e.g., D:\dgreadiness_v3.6.
  3. In the elevated command prompt, enter this command:
    @powershell -ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned -Command "D:\dgreadiness_v3.6\DG_Readiness_Tool_v3.6.ps1 -Disable"

    Intel HAXM

  4. Restart your Widows PC. At boot when asked, disable Device Guard and Credentials Guard by pressing Windows key.
  5. When Windows has started, you should check whether your PC is ready for installing HAXM. This is done by downloading the latest version of HAXM  from https://github.com/intel/haxm/releases/latest extracting it to a folder and launching haxm_check.exe. It should show YES for both VT and NX support.Intel HAXM
  6. Now you can finish installing HAXM on your Windows 10 PC by running intelhaxm-android.exe. After this, you should be ready to use HAXM hypervisor in Qemu without any problems.Intel HAXM

HAXM is available for those Intel processors only that come with VT-x technology built inside. It is a great alternative for KVM which is used under Linux.

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