Wednesday, February 25, 2015

Enabling SMEP in VMware Windows 8.1 guest

I have many VMs on my Windows 8.1 64-bit host. I have both Windows 8.1 32-bit and Windows 8.1 64-bit as guests. I noticed that SMEP is enabled on my 32-bit guest, but not my 64-bit one.

SMEP is not enabled.

So I tried something: I checked the box under VM settings -> Hardware -> Processors -> Disable acceleration for binary translation.

Disabling acceleration for binary translation

And SMEP now works on my 64-bit Win 8.1 guest!


SMEP enabled after disabling acceleration.