Early technology preview of x86_64 emulation

I'm very excited to see beta support for intel VMs on Apple silicon. After quite a bit of wrangling, I managed to get one of my old Windows 10 VMs running on my M1 Air. However, it's got a lot of software on it (Oracle personal edition plus a server-based development environment), and the 8Gb memory plus 1CPU limitation prevents it from being usable. The CPU stays 100% at idle, and it crashes after an hour or two. The UI is almost completely unresponsive, and it's extremely difficult to even get Task Manager open.

But this is just a starting point. I imagine that you will be able to raise the memory and CPU limit over time, and when you do I will try again! I am still using a 2019 Mac Pro because I need to run Intel VMs, and maybe one day you will have Intel emulation at the point where I can finally switch over to Apple Silicon.


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Below I include some detailed notes on what I needed to do in order to get my older Windows 10 Intel VMs ready to run on my M1 Air.

I tried launching one of my older Windows 10 VMs on my M1 Air - at first I didn't even have the option to boot the VM. I then right-clicked on the VM, chose Show Package Contents, and edited the config.pvs file inside. I set EfiEnabled to 1, so that the VM booted as EFI rather than BIOS. Once I did that, I did get the option to boot the VM. But I got a cryptic error saying that unsupported hardware was present. So, this began a rather epic journey which can be summarized in three steps:
1) Convert boot disk from MBR to GPT (really, really hard because I had deleted the recovery partition from this VM)
2) Convert boot mode from BIOS to EFI
3) Convert boot disk from SCSI to NVMe

This was quite a lot of work to figure out, but now that I know how to do it the steps are not so bad. I get the added bonus that my old VMs really are noticeably faster than before.

I enclose below a more detailed set of notes describing what I did to accomplish the above three steps.


1) Convert your boot partition from MBR to GPT

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-convert-mbr-disk-gpt-move-bios-uefi-windows-10
https://forum.parallels.com/threads/convert-bios-to-uefi-vm.354640/

Windows -> start:
Disk Management
Right-click on boot drive, choose properties, then click Volumes tab.
Does it say partition style: MBR? No good!

Offline conversion MBR to GPT
Settings->Update and Security->Recovery->Advanced Startup->Restart Now
============== YOU MAY BE MISSING YOUR WINDOWS RECOVERY PARTITION!!! ===========
============== If you are, use this PPT: recovery volume - how to build a new one.pptx ==========
============== and ====


after rebooting
Troubleshoot->Advanced Options->Command Prompt
takes about a half-minute to boot to the command prompt (you will be prompted to logon as an admin)

Once you're in the Windows Recovery DOS Prompt

type
mbr2gpt /validate

then type:
mbr2gpt /convert

output should all be good. You will likely see "failed to update ReAgent.xml" at the bottom.

VM WILL NO LONGER BOOT!!!!
shut down for now. (exit from DOS, then Turn Off Your PC button)

last step:
right-click on the VM package in Finder, choose Show Package Contents
edit config.pvs in bbedit

search for EFI
Set EFI Enabled to 1 (it will be set to 0)

Now the VM should boot.
After it boots up, go into Disk Management, right-click on drive, properties, Volumes.
Partition style should now be GPT!

Run:
MSINFO32

Look for BIOS Mode -> should now be UEFI

Finally, assuming you saw "failed to update ReAgent.xml" earlier, type the following two commands:
reagentc /disable
reagentc /enable

this is very quick.

------------
convert boot volume to NVMe
https://forum.parallels.com/threads/nvme-storage-controller-support-in-pd15-is-it-automatic.347744/
with VM shut down, add a small NVMe hard disk as NVMe 1
boot up the VM. Go into Disk Management, format the HD and assign a drive letter.
Shut down. Set the new NVMe to NVMe2, and set the boot volume to NVMe1.
Boot back up. Does it boot?

 

Dear Support Team,

I have a VM with Windows 11 and the Start with Emulator option does not appear.

Please, your help.
Kind Regards.

 

I had a similar problem (previous post). My VM was booting using BIOS, and the boot disk had an MBR partition and SCSI hardware. I changed my VM from BIOS to EFI, I changed the boot disk partition from MBR to GPT, and I changed the boot disk hardware from SCSI to NVMe. Then I got the Start with Emulator option. Also be sure you have the latest version of Parallels. They have added this feature to v20 only very recently.

 

Thanks for your reply. I saw your previous post and it's very interesting, I just need time to try to follow your steps.
I managed to install a new VM with Windows 10 x86 (I had to do it from the command line):
prlctl create vW10-x86 -d win-10 --cpu-type x86
prlctl set W10--x86 --device-set cdrom0 --image /Users/rafa/Downloads/WIN10X64PRO.ISO --connect
prlctl start W10--x86

I tried some things that don't work with Windows 11 ARM and I loved being able to do it from an x86 VM on a Mac with an M processor (mine in particular is a MacBook Pro 16 M4 MAX with 64Gb of RAM and 2Tb SSD and it's my first MBP). Because it's a first released version with the limitation of just 1 CPU, everything is veryyyy slow. Hopefully the Parallels development team will continue to make progress and be able to remove that limitation of just 1 CPU.
Returning to the problem itself, I'm going to try to install a new VM with Win 11 x86 and see if the emulator option appears as it did in the Win 10 x86 VM. I don't think the emulator option appears in the VMs I have because they are ARM versions.

Thanks.

 

I ran the following and I keep getting "Windows could not complete the installation. To install Windows on this computer, restart the installation."

prlctl create Win2022S1 -d win-2022 --cpu-type x86
prlctl set Win2022S1 --device-set cdrom0 --image /Users/xxxxx/Downloads/en-us_windows_server_2022_updated_feb_2025_x64_dvd_0398a40c.iso --connect
prlctl start Win2022S1

I am using a new MacBook Pro 16" m4 Max with Sequoia 15.3.1 with Parallels Desktop 20 for Mac Pro Edition

 

I think I got it to work. I hope they can get it to allow more than 8GB of RAM. I am looking to set up a test SharePoint SE environment for work.

 

Could someone of the staff please state if the support of USB devices will come?

 

I am also exited to see Parallels providing some x86 emulation support. I hope this effort will go on and eventually include x86 32bit and legacy bios support.

Because as exciting it technically is, I have no use in running Win 10 or 11 in a superslow x86_64 emulation, as both of these are available in native ARM and run most x86 user space apps fine, 64 and 32 bit, via their built-in x86 emulation in useable speed. On the other hand, legacy XP..7 machines would be totally fine, speed-wise, in a 1-core emulation - the hardware these ran on originally were not faster than an emulation is today on a M2,3,4. And of these, I have a few for legacy industrial stuff that I still need to support, and need to keep old x86 machines around for now. The ability to secure these for the future by running them on today's and tomorrow's ARM based hosts would be great!

So I really hope Paralles will use all the experience and IP for emulation of a legacy single core pentium PC, the peripherals, the legacy BIOS etc. they do have from their long history of doing great PC-on-Mac VMs, and leverage all this around a x86-32bit single core CPU emulator eventually.

 

This feature is very important to us. As a .NET developer, I need to use the x86 version of Visual Studio for SSRS development, since the SSRS plugin only supports x86. I truly appreciate the effort behind this x86_64 emulation and look forward to the final release.

 

Microsoft really needs to get their heads out of the ground and port the components of SQL Server that are intel architecture only to ARM or architecture independent fashion. Microsoft has taken more than a decade to port Windows and Office to ARM.

 

Kudos to the product team.... I am really happy to see the focus on expanding the capabilities to cover more of our needs. The Mojave type VM is really what I have been waiting for.... right now I have latest MacOS on my MBP M3 Max but have other keep my MBP i9 on Mojave because I still need to use iPhoto, iTunes, and apps like KARMA for music. (For some reason the Mojave VM I created on from the i9 MBP to run in Parallels on i9 just would not install the key apps properly, but that is a different thread I will need to pursue). Having a functional Mojave VM in Parallels on Apple Silicon would make life immensely easier.

 

Does this work with Trial version?
I wanted to test how one of my VMs that I have under Parallels on my old Intel laptop is working on my M2 Macbook Pro. However, I do not have option to run emulated and I am getting message that it cannot be started because it is for Intel.

 

It is unlikely that Mojave will be supported on Apple Silicon as it built for intel architecture. iPhoto and iTunes have been replaced in macOS for a while now. The mobile device functionality was placed in Finder, while Music, Podcasts, Apple TV have replaced the corresponding functions in iTunes and Photos replaced iPhoto. I have never heard of KARMA before, but then again I just used iTunes for managing my music until Apple split up iTunes into Music. I never found a need to purchase or download a third party application for managing my music.