HYPER-V and 2nd level VM

jimbo45 · Aug 17, 2023

Hi folks

I've enabled 2nd level VM and it works on creating "nested VM's" -- not worried about performance at this point - I cam mess with that later -- but is this correct -- cannot run Macrium VIboot from within a Virtual machine or have I done something wrong. Hyper-V works OK so I'm not sure what to look for next. Hyper-V on the VM (VM1) can create VM2 and run it -- again don't think about performance -- the thing runs !!!.

Viboot though runs (as it should) perfectly well on the HOST.

Running on latest Canary build W11 Pro

I know this is not normally done and I can't remember if it worked previously but nesting VM's i.e VM1 is HOST for VM2 was (and is) perfectly possible .

Cheers
jimbo

cereberus · Aug 17, 2023

jimbo45 said:
Hi folks

I've enabled 2nd level VM and it works on creating "nested VM's" -- not worried about performance at this point - I cam mess with that later -- but is this correct -- cannot run Macrium VIboot from within a Virtual machine or have I done something wrong. Hyper-V works OK so I'm not sure what to look for next. Hyper-V on the VM (VM1) can create VM2 and run it -- again don't think about performance -- the thing runs !!!.

Viboot though runs (as it should) perfectly well on the HOST.

Running on latest Canary build W11 Pro

View attachment 68080

I know this is not normally done and I can't remember if it worked previously but nesting VM's i.e VM1 is HOST for VM2 was (and is) perfectly possible .

Cheers
jimbo

Ask on Macrium Reflect forum?

jimbo45 · Aug 17, 2023

cereberus said:
Ask on Macrium Reflect forum?

good idea - never thought of that

cheers
jimbo

GaryW · Sep 8, 2023

I have several VM's running most of the time. Some are set to automatically backup using Macrium. The auto backups sometimes fail because of permissions issues, but manually initiated backups always work if I do everything right.

cereberus · Sep 9, 2023

GaryW said:
I have several VM's running most of the time. Some are set to automatically backup using Macrium. The auto backups sometimes fail because of permissions issues, but manually initiated backups always work if I do everything right.

Nice ro know but the thread is about running viboot on a nested vm.

Hopachi · Sep 10, 2023

It looks as viboot checks at launch if it runs in a VM and simply won't run if so.
The message it shows is clear.

jimbo45 · Sep 10, 2023

Hopachi said:
It looks as viboot checks at launch if it runs in a VM and simply won't run if so.
The message it shows is clear.

However the "OS" it's running in is now the HOST even if it is in a VM. I suppose somewhere the system must know whether it's in a VM environment or not -- otherwise one could use a VM to hack into all sorts of things on a hardware host.

Anyway I've finished with that for now -- it's not a serious issue. !!

cheers
jimbo

Hopachi · Sep 10, 2023

jimbo45 said:
However the "OS" it's running in is now the HOST even if it is in a VM. I suppose somewhere the system must know whether it's in a VM environment or not -- otherwise one could use a VM to hack into all sorts of things on a hardware host.

If it's a VM it's a VM. Point on that.

The system knows.

Just check Task Manager -> Performance tab below.
You either have "Virtualisation: Enabled" and in case of a VM, you get something like "Virtual machine: Yes"
I believe there are API calls to ask the system if 'this' is a VM so a program will also know, on demand.

Regarding the hack part, it is indeed very useful to be able to test stuff in VM, that's why some malware even started detecting if it is ran in a VM and in such a case the operation will be terminated, read no infection like on a real host will occur and no complete analysis can be done in case of malware hunting and study.