How do I know if I'm working on a Virtual Machine or not?

Question

Is there a way to know if the Windows machine I'm working on is virtual or physical? (I'm connecting with RDP to the machine. If it's a virtual machine it is working and handled by VMWare).

see also - http://stackoverflow.com/questions/779723/determine-when-running-in-a-virtual-machine — warren, Feb 03 '10 at 13:51

score 75 · Answer 1 · edited May 21 '13 at 18:08

75

In the CMD window type:

SYSTEMINFO

You will find a line with the following text (or similar):

System Manufacturer:       VMware, Inc.
System Model:              VMware Virtual Platform

edited May 21 '13 at 18:08

Greg

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answered Sep 07 '12 at 13:07

castrocra

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If Hyper V is used you get: System Manufacturer: Microsoft Corporation System Model: Virtual Machine – Gayan Dasanayake Mar 24 '17 at 10:24
Very useful :) Thank you for this. – ShellZero Aug 05 '22 at 16:56

score 40 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 03 '10 at 13:31

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If it's Windows, just have a look at the hardware screens. It'll have a billion and five VMWare-branded virtual devices.

answered Feb 03 '10 at 13:31

Oli

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Agreed. Since the OP mentioned RDP, it's most likely Windows, so there you go. – mfinni Feb 03 '10 at 14:01
+1 for not assuming it's Linux like I did – Matt Simmons Feb 03 '10 at 14:21
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Looking at drivers is also works for linux. lsmod would probably return the information that you need. – Seamus Connor Feb 03 '10 at 17:01
@Seamus: True enough! – Oli Feb 04 '10 at 11:14
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Correction: A billion and six. – Get-HomeByFiveOClock Jun 19 '14 at 13:50

score 20 · Answer 3 · edited May 21 '13 at 18:06

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If it's handled by VMware, it isn't too difficult at the present moment. This could change in the future.

# dmidecode -s system-manufacturer
VMware, Inc.

edited May 21 '13 at 18:06

Michael Hampton

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answered Feb 03 '10 at 13:31

Matt Simmons

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I get 'dmidecode' is not recognized as an internal or external command on both Windows 7 and 10 ESXi 6.0 VMs. – Andrew S May 08 '18 at 15:59
[`dmidecode`](https://www.tecmint.com/how-to-get-hardware-information-with-dmidecode-command-on-linux/) is a linux command used to get information about the hardware. It does not work on Windows. – Jaime Aug 06 '18 at 01:29
for `linux` OS this is the best option to detect hardware vs virtual machine.. – Satish Sep 10 '18 at 01:10

score 18 · Answer 4 · edited May 22 '13 at 03:18

18

In Linux you can also use "virt-what". "virt-what - detect if we are running in a virtual machine".

edited May 22 '13 at 03:18

Greg

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answered Sep 07 '12 at 13:13

Mike

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score 10 · Answer 5 · edited Jan 08 '14 at 18:31

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On Windows, from CMD:

Systeminfo | findstr /i model

returns something like:

System Model:              VMware Virtual Platform
                           [01]: Intel64 Family 6 Model 26 Stepping 5 GenuineInt

edited Jan 08 '14 at 18:31

Dan

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answered Jan 08 '14 at 16:17

BurnoutTech

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score 10 · Answer 6 · answered Aug 31 '14 at 00:28

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On Linux, run this:

$ dmesg |grep -i hypervisor
 Hypervisor detected: KVM

answered Aug 31 '14 at 00:28

Arash

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for linux you type `dmesg |grep DMI` Virtual Machines: [root@myhost ~]# dmesg |grep DMI
DMI 2.3 present. DMI: Microsoft Corporation Virtual Machine/Virtual Machine, BIOS 090006 05/23/2012 [root@myhost ~]# dmesg |grep -i virtual DMI: Microsoft Corporation Virtual Machine/Virtual Machine, BIOS 090006 05/23/2012 Booting paravirtualized kernel on bare hardware input: Macintosh mouse button emulation as /devices/virtual/input/input1 scsi 0:0:0:0: Direct-Access Msft Virtual Disk 1.0 PQ: 0 ANSI: 4 input: Microsoft Vmbus HID-compliant Mouse as /devices/virtual/input/input4 Physical: [root@backdev1 – gabo34 Apr 10 '14 at 17:00
this worked for me. `dmidecode` returned `permission denied !`. – Alok Mishra Nov 19 '18 at 08:58

score 4 · Answer 7 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:14

4

If you are in Windows, as castrocra says, you can run the systeminfo command from inside a cmd shell, then look for the "BIOS Version".

These are probably real machines:

BIOS Version:              Dell Inc. A03, 06/12/2010
BIOS Version:              Phoenix Technologies, LTD MS7254 1.08, 08/03/2007

This, on the other hand, is almost certainly a virtual machine:

BIOS Version:              VMware, Inc. VMW71.00V.0.B64.1201040214, 04/01/2012

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:14

Community

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answered Nov 23 '12 at 14:31

Luke

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Modern hypervisors can supply arbitrary strings here, making this a not very reliable check. – Michael Hampton Jul 04 '14 at 18:03
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Unfortunately this isn't reliable. I'm running a virtual machine but my BIOS is showing as: "Phoenix Technologies LTD 6.00, 16/08/2013" – Gavin Ward Oct 30 '14 at 09:27
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VMWare with `Phoenix Technologies LTD 6.00, 9/17/2015` – Ravi Parekh Dec 18 '17 at 12:41

score 4 · Answer 8 · answered Aug 22 '14 at 01:50

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It has been answered, but FWIW you can do this in powershell:

gwmi -q "select * from win32_computersystem"

The "Manufacturer" will be "Microsoft Corporation" and the "Model" will be "Virtual Machine" if it's a virtual machine, or it should display regular manufacturer details if not, e.g. "Dell Inc." and "PowerEdge R210 II" respectively.

answered Aug 22 '14 at 01:50

Richard Hauer

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Funny. _My_ Windows VM says the Manufacturer and Model are both "Bochs". – Michael Hampton Aug 22 '14 at 02:07
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Or in cmd: `wmic computersystem get manufacturer | find "VMware" && echo In VMWare || echo Not in VMWare`. It's faster than `systeminfo`-based solutions. – atzz Mar 03 '15 at 13:13
@MichaelHampton Are you using VMs? Which platform - HyperV, VMWare or something else? Seems like the VM is probably being run in a Bochs emulator or something like that. – Richard Hauer Oct 31 '15 at 04:42

score 3 · Answer 9 · answered Jan 23 '20 at 10:18

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On Linux if you prefer to look under /proc try

cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep flags | grep hypervisor

answered Jan 23 '20 at 10:18

e271p314

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score 1 · Answer 10 · answered Oct 25 '17 at 15:58

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Even simpler - wmic /node: bios get serialnumber

Anything that returns a Dell-style serial number is physical.

It will also return "VMware-42 22 26 a8 dd 6e e3 b3-2e 03 fc 2c 92 ae 2e 89", if it's a virtual machine.

answered Oct 25 '17 at 15:58

Magilla66

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Sadly, this is not working all the time. Our ESXi servers are running a DELL VMware Image, and all VMs claim to be a Dell hardware server via WMI. The serial number is the DELL service tag. – Tobias Dec 11 '19 at 07:43

score 0 · Answer 11 · answered May 10 '21 at 14:59

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There is another option here which describes the official way to do so:

For Windows:

Click Start > Run. Type msinfo32 and press Enter. In the right pane, look for System Manufacturer for 'VMware, Inc.'

answered May 10 '21 at 14:59

Justin Goldberg

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score 0 · Answer 12 · answered Feb 03 '10 at 13:29

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You could try the "Host Detection" program.

answered Feb 03 '10 at 13:29

rkthkr

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This link is broken as of 2019. I found [this page](http://www.codegurus.be/Programming/c++_en.htm) on the site that links to the program page, but *that* link is also broken. – Bacon Bits Dec 26 '19 at 17:25
Seems like the last working cached page of this was back in 2007: http://web.archive.org/web/20070401065556/http://www.codegurus.be/codegurus/Programming/virtualpc&vmware_en.htm – David Jan 29 '21 at 01:47

score 0 · Answer 13 · answered Feb 05 '10 at 19:17

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If it's a Unix VM, use imvirt. It's a Perl script that detects VMWare, Xen, and several others.

answered Feb 05 '10 at 19:17

Peter Westlake

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He's speaking about a Windows virtual machine, not a Unix one – Mat Jul 09 '19 at 19:24

score 0 · Answer 14 · answered Sep 21 '17 at 12:50

One (relatively) simple way to detect key virtualization information is via WMI / WBEM. You can use the root\CIM2 namespace and access the Baseboard class (full of interesting BIOS information) to get a description of the "physical" system. This class often includes information about the motherboard and chassis - manufacture, model, serial number, other.

Run the following command from a command prompt or PowerShell session:

wmic baseboard get manufacturer, product, Serialnumber, version

score -2 · Answer 15 · answered Apr 20 '12 at 20:25

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I had the same question and found that there are a lot of processes running with "VM" in the name, for example VMWareTray.exe

answered Apr 20 '12 at 20:25

Josh

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Yes, but only if the VMware tools package is installed. – jscott Apr 20 '12 at 20:30

score -2 · Answer 16 · answered Jan 23 '14 at 12:30

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nbtstat -a The outcome will tell you as VMs have a speecific prefix which is 00-50-56-XX-XX-XX. There is also another prefix it uses but I can not remember at the top of my head but I recall Vcenter uses 00-50-56-XX-XX-XX so this ios the one I check only.

I think this is the best way, personally.

answered Jan 23 '14 at 12:30

James Mellitas

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...except for when someone manually sets the MAC address to something else – Rex Apr 10 '14 at 18:17
or clones it from existing hardware in a P-V situation – Rowan Hawkins Sep 18 '17 at 22:23

How do I know if I'm working on a Virtual Machine or not?

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