Installing 64bit OS on a virtual machine hosted on a 32 bit OS

I wanted to play with SharePoint 2010 and decided to install it on my development box at work. SharePoint 2010 requirement showed that it could only be installed on a 64bit OS. Unfortunately, my dev box was a few year old server with Dual Core Xenon processor running 32 bit Windows 2003 Server. Instead of re-installing the OS, I decided to install VirtualBox (Oracle's virtual machine solution) and run a 64bit OS on it. This is when I ran into some interesting problems.

When I tried to install 64 bit Windows 7 on the VM, it came back with the error saying that "the motherboard does not support installing 64bit OS". Technically even though your host machine is running 32 bit OS, you can install a 64 bit OS on your virtual machine as long as the motherboard supports the following -

• 64 bit Architecture
• Virtualization technology (VT)

The following tools will help you determine it for the Intel processors -

• Intel Processor Identification Utility - Under CPU Technologies Tab, you should see the above two flags as 'Yes'. Even if one of them is No, you cannot install 64 bit OS.

If you are sure that your motherboard supports 64bit OS but unsure of virtualization flag. You can use the Microsoft tool for checking that flag -

• Microsoft Hardware Assisted Virtualization Detection Tool