For the uninitiated, hypervisors like Hyper-V are apps that leverage the virtualization facility of your CPU to create and manage virtual machines. If you're into testing new operating systems, virtual machines can be a godsend as they let you tinker with multiple distros without forcing you to modify the settings on your daily driver. Although you'll have to follow some extra steps to get it running on the Home edition of Windows 11, Microsoft's Hyper-V can grant more performance to your VMs, as it's a Type-1 hypervisor that interacts directly with the hardware.

That said, you might want to disable Hyper-V as it's known to cause slowdowns and performance issues when you run other hypervisors in your system. If you're attempting to run a virtualization platform inside your Windows 11 machine, you may have trouble toggling nested virtualization without disabling Hyper-V first. Since certain Hyper-V packages are enabled by default on Microsoft's flagship OS, you'll have to go through a couple of steps to remove them from your PC.

How to disable Hyper-V in Windows 11 using Control Panel

The simplest way to turn off Hyper-V on your PC involves navigating through Windows Features in the Control Panel.

1. Type "Control panel" into the Search Bar and click on the Control Panel suggestion.
2. Click on Programs.
3. Select the Turn Windows features on or off option.
4. Scroll down until you spot Hyper-V in the Windows Features window and click on the checkmark next to it to disable Hyper-V. Likewise, disable the Virtual Machine Platform.
5. Press the OK button and restart your PC.

How to disable Hyper-V in Windows 11 using Terminal commands

If you want a quick method to turn off Hyper-V without uninstalling it, you can run the BCDEdit command on Windows Terminal. Since BCDEdit allows you to modify the boot parameters for applications, you can use it to prevent Hyper-V from starting up every time you boot your system.

1. Right-click on the Windows button and choose Terminal (Admin).
2. Grant administrator privileges to Terminal when prompted by Windows
3. Type the following command and hit the Enter key.

   bcdedit /set hypervisorlaunchtype off

4. Restart your PC.
5. Alternatively, you can use the Disable-WindowsOptionalFeature command to get rid of Hyper-V. All you have to do is replace the BCDEdit command with the following code:

   Disable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName Microsoft-Hyper-V-Hypervisor

If these commands don’t work, you might want to switch from Command Prompt to Windows PowerShell Windows Terminal and run the DISM command.

1. Click on the drop-down arrow next to the new tab button and choose Command prompt.
2. Type the following command and press Enter.

   dism /online /disable-feature /featurename:microsoft-hyper-v-all

3. Restart your system

You’d also want to disable Hyper-V net adapters if Windows rolls back the changes during the restart.

1. Switch back to Windows PowerShell and run the following command:

   get-netadapter|where-object {$_.interfacedescription -like "*hyper-v*"}|Disable-NetAdapter

2. As always, restart your system after executing the command.

How to disable Device Guard, Credential Guard, and Memory Isolation in Windows 11

If you still encounter issues with other hypervisors, you should consider disabling three Hyper-V-related features: Device Guard, Credential Guard, and Memory Isolation. The Registry Editor is a powerful tool that allows you to disable all three, but you should follow these steps carefully as modifying registry values can easily break Windows if you aren’t cautious enough.

1. Right-click on the Start button and choose Run.
2. Type regedit and press Enter.
3. Press Yes when Windows asks you to grant administrator privileges.
4. Paste the following address into the Search Bar and hit Enter.

   Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\DeviceGuard 

5. Right-click on the screen, choose new -> DWORD (32-bit) Value and give it the name EnableVirtualizationBasedSecurity.
6. Double-click on the new DWORD Value you just created, set its value data to 0, and click on the OK button.
7. Next, enter the following address into the Search Bar and hit the Enter key.

   Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa

8. Create a new DWORD Value and name it LsaCfgFlags.
9. You can disable Credential Guard by setting the value of LsaCfgFlags to 0.
10. Finally, paste the following address into the Search Bar and hit Enter.

    Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\DeviceGuard\Scenarios\HypervisorEnforcedCodeIntegrity

11. Change the value data of the Enabled DWORD from 1 to 0 to disable memory isolation.

The three features are meant to safeguard your PC from malware, so you should only disable them as a last resort if you continue to encounter the same errors in other hypervisors even after disabling Hyper-V.

Should you disable Hyper-V in Windows 11?

Besides its performance impact on other hypervisors, many users report increased performance in games and emulators after disabling Hyper-V. So, if you're not planning to run heavy-duty workloads on your VMs, it might be a good idea to disable Hyper-V and switch to VirtualBox or VMware Workstation Pro.

That being said, Hyper-V is a good alternative to type-2 hypervisors if you wish to run performance-heavy tasks on your virtual machines. But remember, it's only available by default on the Pro, Enterprise, and Education editions of Windows 11. So, you'll need to manually install Hyper-V if your PC is equipped with the Home version of the OS, though you won't be able to access the Windows Sandbox facility without upgrading to the Pro or other premium versions of the OS. But if you're planning to build a home lab with an old PC, then it's a good idea to ditch normal hypervisors and switch to a full-fledged virtualization platform, like Proxmox.