WRT Windows 11 Sandbox and VMWare Fusion 13.

[mixi_plitzik]

Hey all,

I’m not able to install Windows 11 Sandbox; when I attempt to add this feature the option is unavailable, ie, it’s grayed out. The virtual machine otherwise seems to be installed and running properly (except for the pesky webcam issue I noted in an earlier post.)

My environment consists of a Mac Mini M4 Pro, latest MacOS, latest version of Windows 11 ARM, latest VMWare Fusion.

Is this feature supported by VMware? If yes, what must I do to enable it? If no, does anyone know if Parallels supports this?

Thank you.

Mixi

[Technogeezer]

Windows 11 Sandbox requires hardware virtualization features to be available for Windows to user. When running Windows in a VM, that means that nested virtualization must be available.

Nested virtualization is not currently available on a Fusion VM on M-series (Apple Silicon) Macs. That's probably why it's not working. Broadcom has not indicated when or if nested virtualization will be made available on M-series Macs. I'm not sure if Parallels is supporting this yet.

Apple announced nested virtualization support for their native hypervisor frameworks (both virtualization and hypervisor frameworks). This support requires a minimum of a macOS 15 Sequoia host, and either M3 or M4 hardware. Any M1 or M2 chip variants don't have the hardware support for nested virtualization .  Parallels and UTM would have the same restrictions on hardware and OS level support, by the way.

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- Paul (technogeezer)
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[Andrea Consalvi]

Hi,

Windows Sandbox is available on Windows 11 ARM starting from version 22H2. However, if the option is grayed out, it could be due to virtualization not being enabled or specific system requirements not being met.

Check if virtualization is enabled:

Open a Command Prompt with Admin privileges.
Type systeminfo.exe and press Enter.
Look for "Virtualization Enabled in Firmware" under the "Hyper-V Requirements" section, and ensure it says "Yes."
Enable Windows Sandbox:

Search for "Turn Windows features on or off" in the Start menu and open it.
Select "Windows Sandbox" from the list and click "OK."
Restart the VM if prompted.

Regarding Parallels, there's no specific information confirming that Windows Sandbox works with Windows 11 ARM in Parallels. 

[Technogeezer]

Problem is that unlike Fusion on Intel Macs, virtualization can't be enabled for a VM running on Apple Silicon Macs. There's no VM setting to turn it on, nor is there a VM BIOS option to enable it. Nothing you do in the Windows 11 ARM VM can make it work.

The lack of nested virtualization support means that any Windows feature that relies on hardware virtualization (such as Hyper-V, VBS, WSL2! And Sandbox) won't work on Windows 11 ARM VMs on Fusion. 

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- Paul (technogeezer)
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