How to Enable CPU Virtualization on a Lenovo Y550

[GophaKyorselv]

DISCLAIMER: You stand a good chance of "bricking" your laptop if you make an error in the steps described below. Triple Check your work and do not attempt this procedure if you've walked under a ladder today, a black cat crossed your path or you've broken a mirror within the past 7 years. I cannot be held responsible for your inability to follow directions if your laptop does in fact break.

Step 1: You will need to create a Bootable CMD Flash Drive, for which I've written a guide, here.

Step 2: Download Lenovo_Y550_Virtualization.zip from here.

FILE: Lenovo_Y550_Virtualization.zip
SIZE: 242,093 bytes
SHA-1: 9C0EFE7E1362D5DCA33435512765C27A53FD8B79

Step 3: Extract the contents to the flash drive you made in Step 1.

Step 4: Restart your computer. Press F12 at the POST Screen and select Boot from USB Disk (It may say something else, referring to your flash drive)

Step 5: At the Command Prompt, type "dump" and press enter. This will run dump.bat. It will open up nvram.txt in a blue text editor window.

Step 6: You must now create and/or modify two values... changing them from 0000 to 0001. These Values (or Tokens) are dependent on the BIOS Version installed. All of these values are in Alphanumerical Order. Scroll down using the PgDn button till you get to the corresponding values...

Version v1.04: (0372) and (0375)
Version v1.06: (0375) and (0378)
Version v2.01: (0378) and (037B)
Version v2.03: (0378) and (037B)
Version v2.05: (0378) and (037B)

Using 2.05 as an example, modify these two addresses to say 0001 (instead of 0000.) If the value does not exist, create it in order. (In my instance, 0378 did not exist so I added a line above 037B and copied the format.) This is what my screen looked like:

Step 7: Press CTRL-F2 and change the File Name from NVRAM.TXT to VT.TXT and press Enter.

ANOTHER SCARY DISCLAIMER: You stand a good chance of "bricking" your laptop if you've made an error in the steps described above. Triple Check your work. Verify that you're using the proper BIOS Version. Make sure you've used the correct brackets and the Token Addresses Match what I've mentioned above. If you screw up, you will not be able to return back to this forum to ask me how to fix your now-useless computer.

NO CHANGES TO YOUR SYSTEM HAVE ACTUALLY BEEN MADE YET... YOU CAN SIMPLY PRESS CTRL-ALT-DELETE IF YOU WANT TO ABANDON THIS ENDEAVOR NOW WITHOUT ANY REPERCUSSIONS.

Step 8: Press ALT-X which will close the text editor. At the Command Prompt, type "save" and press enter.

Step 9: AHHH! NVRAM STUFF HAPPENING!

Step 10: Shut down your laptop. Unplug the battery and the AC adapter and press the power button to ensure the motherboard is deprived of energy, then turn it back on. Done.

To verify this has worked, you can try it out with whatever utility merited hardware virtualization (I needed it to run an x64 server environment in VirtualBox this morning) or you can use freeware programs like Securable (downloadable here)

Addendum: This Guide was rewritten from it's original author, Middleton from the lenovo forums.