Windows 11 has been around for quite some time, and so far things look good for the OS. Well, apart from its terrible system requirements list. Windows 11 brings in a new visual interface as well as under the hood performance.
During its announcement held back in June, Windows 11 was touted as being as good for gamers as it would help bring better gaming performance as well as the introduction of Direct Storage. However, reports are running around that having Virtualization Based Security enabled could cause games to have some performance issues. Read on to know how to disable VBS on Windows 11.
Now, VBS isn’t a new thing that has been spotted in Windows 11. It has been around since Windows 10 has been launched. So, to say that it will cause some gaming performance issues does not sit quite right. But yes, there are known issues of Windows 11 having a performance drop on some AMD CPUs, which is being looked into. Not everyone thinks that having VBS enabled should cause some performance issues on your games. Anyways, let’s take a look at VBS and how you can enable or disable it.
Virtualization Based Security on Windows 11
So what is VBS? Well, it is a security feature that secures a part or rather a region of the memory that uses hardware virtualization to enable a secure mode that prevents various kinds of malware attacks from trying to get into sensitive information. This information could be user biometrics, face recognition data, and other credentials. So yes, having VBS enabled is good and it helps in providing an extra layer of security for your system.
So, why are a lot of people saying that it could be reducing gaming performance? Well, it seems that this security feature will be using a chunk of resources. But then since the feature has been there since Windows 10 and nobody brought it out as an issue. So, having VBS enabled on a Windows 11 PC should just be fine and not hamper gaming performance at all. However, if you feel like you might be having performance drops on your Windows 11 PC, you can follow these steps to disable VBS right away.
Steps to Disable VBS on Windows 11 PC.
- Launch the Start Menu on your Windows 11 PC and type in Core Isolation.
- Open the app from the search results.
- You will see Memory Integrity and a toggle next to it.
- Click on the toggle to switch it off.
- It will now ask you to restart your system.
- Once you have restarted, go back and check if the feature has been disabled.
- If it is, start a game and see if you feel any kind of improvement. If there is no difference, turn VBS back on, or else leave it switched off.
- Do note that if you are running Windows 11 on an unsupported CPU, then there are chances that the option will be grayed out and it will ask you to scan again due to some drivers being incompatible.
Disable VBS via Registry Edit
The Registry Editor tool in Windows is quite useful considering that you will be able to make changes to a lot of values such as being able to disable Windows Update service and other features. You can use this tool to even disable virtualization on your Windows 11 PC. Follow these steps to do so.
- Open up the Run Dialog by pressing the Windows and R keys.
- Type in regedit and hit the Enter key.
- It will ask for administrator permissions to open, select Yes.
- With the registry editor open, simply copy and paste this path into the address bar
Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\DeviceGuard
- On the left panel, you will see a lot of values.
- Select the EnableVirtualizationBasedSecuirty and open it.
- Now, change the value from 1 to 0 and click on the OK button. To enable just reverse the value.
- Close the Registry Editor and reboot your system.
- You have now disabled virtualization as well as VBS on your Windows 11 PC.
And this is how you can disable VBS on Windows 11 as well as Windows 10 system. Disable it only and only if you have issues with your games, otherwise, it is best to leave VBS on at all times. Also, if you are running Windows 11 on a system that doesn’t meet Windows 11 system requirements, you should be just fine as your system will have VBS disabled completely by default.
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