Virtual PC running on my VAIO

Sony disables virtualization on all it’s laptops. It does not provide a method to turn it back on, however, there is a workaround. After a bit of googling, I came across this excellent article. Mostly, I used the steps from this guide, though I did a few things differently. As I have Windows 7 x64, the virtual floppy method does not work, so I found my own copy of the 98SE boot floppy files. Also, the AR41M is not listed, but I checked my BIOS version, and the register to change is 027F, from 0000 to 0001. It worked great! Here’s a rundown of what I did:

Download Windows 98SE boot floppy files (and extract somewhere)
Download the HP USB Disk Formatting Tool
Download the extra utilities required
Install and Start the HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool ( Run as Admin )

Install as FAT32
Select Quick Format
Select DOS Startup disk
Use the files from the 98SE boot floppy
Click Start

Copy over SYMCMOS.EXE and the contents of pedit.zip.
Restart and press F2 while the VAIO screen is showing to enter the BIOS.
Make sure Boot From External Drives is enabled.
Save and Exit
Press Esc while the VAIO screen is showing to enter the boot menu
Boot from your flash drive (may show up as an external hard drive)
Enter the following commands:

symcmos -v2 -lcmos.sav
pedit.exe cmos.sav
modify the value at 027F from 0000 to 0001. THIS MAY BE DIFFERENT ON YOUR LAPTOP IF IT IS NOT A VAIO VGN-AR41M. REFER HERE FOR OTHER KNOWN VALUES.
Press Alt-F to access the File menu. Save and Exit.
You may need to restart, I couldn’t type anything further at this stage.
If you restart, enter pedit.exe cmos.sav again to check that the new value is saved to the file.
Having checked that it is, type symcmos -v2 -ucmos.sav
Restart, and Virtualization should be turned on!

Once this is done, you can use the free Windows Virtual PC 2007 to run XP Mode in Windows 7, or load up an ubuntu image etc.