Using Vagrant on Windows is a little bit more complicated. The reason: Hyper-V

The main problem with Hyper-V is that other hypervisors (like VirtualBox) no longer work when Hyper-V is enabled.

It’s also problematic that it’s not really obvious whether Hyper-V is enabled or not. The following pieces of developer software enable/require Hyper-V (as of 2021):

• Docker
• WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux)

If you want to use any of these, you need to use Vagrant with Hyper-V.

Installing required software #

To be able to use Vagrant with Hyper-V, Vagrant requires the Hyper-V PowerShell Cmdlets to be installed. To do so, open an admin PowerShell console and execute this command:

Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName Microsoft-Hyper-V-Management-PowerShell -All

Using Vagrant with Hyper-V #

The most important thing to know:

To use Vagrant with Hyper-V, you need to run your vagrant commands from an admin console.

If you’re in doubt whether Vagrant uses Hyper-V, you can simply add --provider=hyperv to each command:

$ vagrant up --provider=hyperv

Vagrant Version #

Latest usable version: 2.2.6

Note: Newer 2.2.x versions (including 2.2.16) contain a bug that makes Vagrant unusable on Windows: https://github.com/hashicorp/vagrant/issues/12121

Temporarily disable and re-enable Hyper-V #

If you want to temporarily disable Hyper-V (without uninstalling it), open an admin prompt and enter:

$ bcdedit /set hypervisorlaunchtype off

Then restart you machine.

To re-enable Hyper-V afterwards, enter:

$ bcdedit /set hypervisorlaunchtype auto

Again, restart your machine.