Install Hyper-V on Windows 10 Home Edition

As you all know Hyper-V is owned by Microsoft. Before the release, it is known by the Windows Hypervisor platform that allows the users to create and run virtual machines with high performance.

A standalone Windows Hyper-V Server is free of cost but with the feature of the command-line interface only. Hyper-V is available only for Windows 10 Professional Edition, Education Edition, and Enterprise Edition. But if you are using Windows 10 Home Edition or any other edition, then you will not have the “Hyper-V” option in the “Turn Windows features on or off” to run virtual computers.

But I am going to tell you about an easy way to install and enable the Hyper-V feature on Windows 10 Home edition using the command line only. Hyper-V is a hypervisor-based virtualization technology by Microsoft. Hyper-V uses the Windows hypervisor which requires a physical processor with specific features.

System Requirements:

Windows 10 Home
Administrator access of Operating System
Active Internet connection

Note - Most importantly you need to enable Virtualization in BIOS to let users create a VM.

In modern systems, Virtualization is enabled in BIOS by default. To confirm whether Virtualization is enabled or not you just need to right-click on Taskbar and select Task Manager and then Performance Tab in the taskbar and find whether Virtualization is on or off.

Steps to Activate Hyper-V Feature on Windows 10 Home Edition

Firstly you need a Script to download Hyper v for Windows 10 home.

This is the script that is required to install Hyper-V in Windows 10 Home Edition. Just create a Hyper-V-Enabler.txt file and copy this text in that text file. Now change the extension of .txt to .bat file.

pushd "%~dp0"
dir /b %SystemRoot%\servicing\Packages\*Hyper-V*.mum >hyper-v.txt
for /f %%i in ('findstr /i . hyper-v.txt 2^>nul') do dism /online /norestart /add-package:"%SystemRoot%\servicing\Packages\%%i"
del hyper-v.txt
Dism /online /enable-feature /featurename:Microsoft-Hyper-V -All /LimitAccess /ALL
pause

I am also providing a GitHub link for this script. You can find the link to GitHub at end of the blog.

Now when you have downloaded or created the Batch file having this script, it's time to run this script or Hyper-V-Enabler.bat file. Right-click on the .bat file and select run as administrator.

Now the installation will start. When you run the Batch file it will open a Command prompt to run the code of the file. Make sure you have an active internet connection on your system to download the files required for installing and activating Hyper-V on Windows 10 Home. This will take some moments depending upon your network speed and system configurations.

When the installation is finished it will ask for restarting the system. Once the installation is complete Hyper-V will automatically get enabled on your system. To make the changes into effect on your system you have to restart your system. Simply press the Y/y key on your command terminal when you see "Do you want to restart the computer now? (Y/N)" and then hit the Enter key.

When the system restart then check whether the Microsoft Windows Hypervisor feature is on our system or not. For that, in the windows search box type Turn Windows features on or off and open it. There you need to scroll and find Hyper-V and make sure all of its tools are checked. If they are not checked check them and then hit the OK button.