Troubleshooting Minikube Installation on Windows(also for WSL/WSL2 users)

Getting VT-x/AMD-v disabled error while installing Minikube on your Windows machines? Here are some of the reasons why it is not working and the troubleshooting methodologies :

• Your PC does not have Virtualization enabled. To solve this, all you need to do is to enable Virtualization in the BIOS menu. All you need to do is to restart your PC and press the BIOS menu key (F2 for Asus) with respect to your PC/Laptop vendor. Now go to Advanced menu in BIOS and enable the Virtualization. Press F10 and Enter to save it and reboot.
• Even after enabling Virtualization, if you’re not able to fix this error, you might need to disable Hyper-V in your system. This especially happens nowadays on Windows 10 with WSL installed in it. Since WSL works on Hyper-V, it is generally difficult to run other virtualization software like Virtual Box, though now a days, Virtual Machine supports Hyper-V which means we can run WSL2 and Virtual Box simultaneously. So in order to set up minikube server on Virtual Box, you need to disable Hyper-V. For this, open command prompt (cmd) using administrator mode and type the following command:

bcdedit /set hypervisorlaunchtype off

Now restart your device to make changes take effect. Now you’ll be able to set up your minikube server using Virtual Box as a driver. But while Hyper-V is turned off, you won’t be able to use WSL2 on your system.

But if you’re using newer version of Virtual Box supporting Hyper-V, you only need to disable Hyper-V while installing/setting up minikube server. Once it is set up and running, you can again enable Hyper-V. Now both WSL2 and minikube server will run successfully. To enable Hyper-V, type the following command in command prompt in administrator mode:

bcdedit /set hypervisorlaunchtype auto

Now restart your PC and start working!!