Hyper-V is probably one of the more exciting technologies to come out of Redmond, on the IT Pro side. I don't keep up on all betas like I used to, but Hyper-V has caught my attention. I reloaded my home pc with Windows Server 2008 x64. Here is my pc type, Gateway GT5032 (http://support.gateway.com/s/PC/R/5878/5878nv.shtml), which has 4 GB of RAM and a x64 processor. But when I went to install Hyper-V, I got an error listed below.
Test Results from Microsoft Hyper-V compatibility check for systems with AMD processors
This system is not compatible with Hyper-V.
This utility detected that a necessary BIOS patch is not installed.
Please contact your system vendor to determine whether a BIOS upgrade is available.
If so, upgrade your BIOS and re-run the utility.
If not, consider upgrading to a new AMD64 system to get the latest in virtualization capabilities, performace, and power efficiency.
AMD's most current processors do not require a BIOS patch to run Hyper-V.
'Link to check AMD
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/TechnicalResources/0,,30_182_871_9033,00.html
'AMD utility
http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/utilities/AMD-V_Hyper-V_Compatibility_Check_Utility.zip
'Blog posting on Hyper-V
http://blogs.technet.com/brad_rutkowski/archive/2008/01/26/does-my-cpu-support-hardware-virtualization-hyper-v.aspx
'3rd party tool to detect all three things
http://www.grc.com/securable.htm
'Hardware detection tool
http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php
Before you start purchasing or reloading your equipment, take 5 minutes and verify your hardware. I'm still on pursuit if I can find a magic firmware upgrade for my equipment, but at least upgrading to w2k8 on my desktop finally retired Vista, which is another story. :)
Hope this helps.
Steve