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user33705
Asked: 2010-02-04 05:25:29 +0800 CST

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

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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).

virtualization windows virtual-machines

16 Answers

  1. 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
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  2. Best Answer

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

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  3. 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.
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  4. In Linux you can also use "virt-what". "virt-what - detect if we are running in a virtual machine".

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  5. 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
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  6. On Linux, run this:

    $ dmesg |grep -i hypervisor
 Hypervisor detected: KVM
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  7. 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
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  8. 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.

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  9. On Linux if you prefer to look under /proc try

    cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep flags | grep hypervisor
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  10. 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.

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