Android Emulator inside Windows VM - AMD Zen3 (Ryzen 5600x)

[TheBatotot]

I'm opening this thread because I'm already out of ideas and losing hope. I built a new system and moved both my Unraid server and main pc into one by utilizing a windows VM. I have everything working except for any android emulator(NOX, LDPlayer, Memu). All emulators I tried were causing BSODs(CRITICAL_STRUCTURE_CORRUPTION). The BSODs never occurred outside of running these emulators and I have done overnight stress testing with Memtest86 and Prime95 without any crash. I have also tried running a "bare-metal" install of Windows 10 and the emulators are working perfectly fine.

 

Things I tried:

1. Disable Hyper-V on VM manager

- I have 2 VMs setup with and with-out hyper V and both are experiencing BSODs

- Hyper V is disabled in Windows features for both, but the setup with Hyper-V enabled on the VM had better mileage since I was able to play for a bit before the BSODs occur

 

2. Enable Windows Hypervisor Platform

- I have found multiple documentations that AMD processors need to have this feature enabled, but enabling this would cause Windows to get stuck on boot-up occasionally

 

3. Enable Virtual Machine Platform

- same with the previous Windows feature, this would occasionally cause the VM to get stuck on bootup

 

I have read here in the forums that running an android emulator inside a Windows VM is equivalent to running a VM inside a VM and doing so would require "nested virtualization" but apparently, this is only supported on Intel chips.

 

Has anyone been able to actually run a proper android emulator inside a Windows VM on an AMD Ryzen system? Or is this an impossibility? I originally went with this approach to reduce power consumption and footprint from 2 pc(Unraid and Windows) to just 1(Unraid w/ Windows VM). It would be such a disappointment to just go back to running 2 systems just because of this. Any help will be very appreciated.

UNRAID: Version: 6.9.0-rc2

M/B: ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. ROG STRIX X570-F GAMING Version Rev X.0x - s/n: 200872757201475

BIOS: American Megatrends Inc. Version 3001. Dated: 12/04/2020

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5600X 6-Core @ 4500 MHz

HVM: Enabled

IOMMU: Enabled

Cache: 384 KiB, 3 MB, 32 MB

Memory: 16 GiB DDR4 (max. installable capacity 128 GiB)
 

Edited December 27, 2020 by TheBatotot

[seredin]

Chiming in to say I'm rooting for you, because I seek this as well. Have you tried the things detailed in this post?

It specifies that a certain build of Windows is required as well as enabling nested virtualization from your terminal. I have tried a number of things myself but have not gotten even as far as you've made it, apparently.

 

Interested to know if this will ever be solved and accessible to non-power-users.

Edited February 19, 2021 by seredin

[TheBatotot]

Hello @seredin, thanks for the support but sad to say that I have already given up from trying to make this work, I have tried all the work-arounds I could find, but the most I could get was half a day running this setup with LDPlayer until I get another BSOD. The setup fulfilled all my other needs but not being able to run an android emulator was a deal breaker for me so I'm now back to using 2 systems. I might try this again in the future if someone publishes his working setup on an AMD Ryzen system. Cheers to you and I hope you can find a solution from your end as well.