Windows 10 Virtualization 'Winception' Allows Windows In Windows Within Your Windows

Nested virtualization leverages hardware virtualization (i.e. AMD-V and Intel VT-x) with a twist. In a typical Hyper-V environment, hardware virtualization capabilities are kept hidden from guest virtual machines — therefore, its cannot take advantage of Hyper-V. However, nested virtualization allows guest virtual machines to “see” that hardware virtualization is supported, thus allowing a cascading level of Windows virtual machines running within the host.

As Microsoft’s Theo Thompson explains, you can run Windows 10 as a host and have a virtualized copy of Windows 10 running within it as a guest, with yet another copy of Windows 10 running within that guest… as a guest. You still with me?

A word of warning though; this functionality is still in testing and is by no means ready for primetime. However, if you want to perform your best Leonardo DiCaprio impression in the digital world, the feature is there to explore in Build 10565.

“When I say it is an “early” preview, I mean it – there are plenty of known issues, and there is functionality which we still need to build,” said Thompson. “We wanted to share this feature with Insiders as soon as possible though, even if that meant things are still rough around the edges.”

If you do choose to test this feature, be sure to read over Microsoft’s “Known Issues” before proceeding.