Question Virtual machines and running windows 11

[strep3241]

I am fairly new to using virtual machines. Just recently started messing with them. I have Windows 11 running on Virtual Box without any issues that I noticed. This is the part I don't understand. The host computer is running an i7-920 cpu, which is several years old, is not able to run windows 11 because of requirement issues. If the host computer can't run windows 11, how is a VM able to run it? I mean it actually runs on less hardware than the host machine, correct?

 

[zir_blazer]

For two reasons. First, because the Firmware level features that are mandatory by W11 are handled by the VM Firmware, which can have features that aren't supported by your ancient Motherboard Firmware (You could do things like having an UEFI VM in an older BIOS-only platform. VM side it will not know the difference). Second, because W11 seems to have laxed requeriments if run in a VM.

 

[Steltek]

Plus, there is no guarantee that the final release version will run in a virtual machine on your hardware. The current released versions have relaxed restrictions that Microsoft will likely lock down once they are released.