Hyper-V won't enable in Windows 8 Pro: "Virtualization support is disabled in the firmware"

There are a few requirements that must be met to enable Hyper-V on Windows 8. According to this TechNet article, other than SLAT, you must also have 4GB of RAM and the system must be 64-bit. These requirements are listed on the Client Hyper-V page on TechNet.

There is a simple check that you can also run to verify that your system meets the requirements. Open a command prompt and type ‘systeminfo.exe’ (without the quotes) and hit enter. The last section will show four lines:

VM Monitor Mode Extensions:

Virtualization Enabled in Firmware:

Second Level Address Translation:

Data Execution Prevention Available:

These will have either ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ next to them, which should help you to track down the exact issue that is stopping you from enabling Hyper-V on your system.

More information about Hyper-V and other new features in Windows 8 can be found on the Explore page of the Springboard Series on TechNet.

Hope this helps.

A few more cold boots seem to have fixed the problem. I guess one cycle wasn't enough.

Update:

The setting seems to reset every time I install major updates/OS upgrades. To fix it, I need to:

1. Change the setting on my laptop
2. Let it boot into Windows
3. Turn off the computer normally (cutting power breaks the process)
4. Unplug the laptop
5. Remove the battery
6. Wait about 30 seconds
7. Replace battery, plug in, turn on
8. Repeat 2-3 times until it works