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Do VMs work on Surface devices?

Aslan Ahmed 30 Reputation points
2026-05-04T00:39:38.4833333+00:00

I tried to install both VirtualBox and VMWare onto my Surface Laptop 7, both of which failed during the setup wizard. VirtualBox showed several error windows showing some kind of driver or component was not installed or couldn't be found on my OS, whereas VMWare first gave me a warning that my processor (a Snapdragon X Plus) wasn't supported and VMs may not run smoothly. I chose to ignore the warning, only for an error to appear a few minutes later stating that the installer failed prematurely. I don't have the pro version of Win11 otherwise I would just use Sandbox, so what's going on? FYI: Virtualization in on in my UEFI

Surface | Surface Laptop | Install and update
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  1. S.Sengupta 30,501 Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2026-05-04T00:57:39.74+00:00

    Your Snapdragon X Plus is an ARM64 processor, and both VirtualBox and VMware Workstation are primarily built for x86-64 (Intel/AMD) CPUs. That's what's causing both failures.

    VirtualBox has no stable ARM64 Windows support at all. The errors you saw are because its kernel drivers simply don't exist for your platform.

    VMware Workstation correctly warned you — it detected ARM64 and knows it can't guarantee support. The premature installer failure is a direct consequence of that incompatibility.

    Hyper-V is the only Microsoft-native hypervisor and has full ARM64 support, but it's locked to Pro/Enterprise.

    The cheapest legitimate path. You can upgrade to Windows 11 Pro.

    2 people found this answer helpful.

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