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).

score 79 · Answer 1 · edited May 21 '13 at 18:08

79

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

167

answered Sep 07 '12 at 13:07

castrocra

791
1
5
2

score 39 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 03 '10 at 13:31

39

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

1,829

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

21

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

252,907

answered Feb 03 '10 at 13:31

Matt Simmons

20,584

score 19 · Answer 4 · edited May 22 '13 at 03:18

19

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

167

answered Sep 07 '12 at 13:13

Mike

22,748

score 11 · Answer 5 · edited Jan 08 '14 at 18:31

11

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

737

answered Jan 08 '14 at 16:17

BurnoutTech

111

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

10

On Linux, run this:

$ dmesg |grep -i hypervisor
 Hypervisor detected: KVM

answered Aug 31 '14 at 00:28

Arash

201
2
2

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

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

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

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.

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

3

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

131

score 1 · Answer 10 · answered May 10 '21 at 14:59

1

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

183

score 1 · Answer 11 · answered Oct 25 '17 at 15:58

1

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

11

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

0

You could try the "Host Detection" program.

answered Feb 03 '10 at 13:29

rkthkr

8,728

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

0

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

816

score 0 · Answer 14 · answered Oct 07 '24 at 09:15

Best way on Windows (PowerShell):

$systemModel = (Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_ComputerSystem).Model
if ($systemModel -match "Virtual|VMware|Hyper-V") {
    Write-Output "This system is a virtual machine."
} else {
    Write-Output "This system is a physical machine."
}

score 0 · Answer 15 · 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 16 · answered Apr 20 '12 at 20:25

-2

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

1

score -2 · Answer 17 · answered Jan 23 '14 at 12:30

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.

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

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