Install Hyper-V on Windows 10 using PowerShell

Running virtual machines on your desktop or notebook and be extremely powerful, to test and develop applications or just run an isolated environment. If you just need a quick disposable Windows 10 environment, I recommend that you have a quick look at the Windows 10 feature called Windows Sandbox. Since Windows 8 you can run Hyper-V on your desktop, laptop or Windows tablet and it can virtualize Windows as well as Linux virtual machines. To install or enable Hyper-V on your Windows 10 machine, you just need to have the following requirements:

• Windows 10 Enterprise, Professional, or Education (Home does not have the Hyper-V feature included)
• 64-bit processor with Second Level Address Translation (SLAT)
• CPU support for VM Monitor Mode Extension (VT-c on Intel CPU’s)
• Minimum of 4 GB memory

The easiest way to enable Hyper-V on Windows 10 is to run the following PowerShell command as an administrator. If you want to install it using the GUI, you can also install the Hyper-V feature in the Windows 10 Control Panel.

Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName:Microsoft-Hyper-V -All

or you can use the following CMD DISM command:

DISM /Online /Enable-Feature /All /FeatureName:Microsoft-Hyper-V

If you are looking for installing Hyper-V on Windows Server, check the following blog post: Install Hyper-V on Windows Server using PowerShell. If you want to know more about Hyper-V on Windows 10, check the Microsoft Docs. If you have any questions feel free to leave a comment.

Hyper-V is also used in many other features within Windows. For example in Windows Defender Application Guard, Docker or Windows Sandbox.