Dell Servers Need BIOS Setting Changed for 64 Bit VMWare

The other day I was installing VMWare ESX server onto a new Dell PowerEdge 2900 server and when I installed the client operating system, Windows Server 2008 64bit, I received this error message:

0xC000035a

Attempt to load 64 bit application; CPU is not compatible with 64 bit mode.

This struck me as very odd for a brand new Dell Server with 12GB RAM and VMWare ESX. Google, however, came to the rescue and I found out that one must go into the DELL Server BIOS and change a CPU setting to “allow virtualization”.

Once that was done, Windows Server 2008 installed just fine.

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