Android Emulator Error missing WinHvPlatform.dll

Question

today, suddendly, all my Android Emulators (on Win10 / IntelliJ IDEA), started complaining about a missing library.

When i launch any emulator, during loading, i read on the console log:

Emulator: Could not load library 'WinHvPlatform.dll'

then, the emulator starts and seems to run OK.

But... does anyone have an idea what it could be the cause ? What is that library ?

Answer 1

It's because Microsoft has worked with Google to allow using Hyper-V instead of Intel HAXM as hypervisor. See these articles:

• https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/visualstudio/2018/05/08/hyper-v-android-emulator-support/
• https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/xamarin/android/get-started/installation/android-emulator/hardware-acceleration

The Windows Hypervisor Platform was introduced in the Windows 10 April 2018 Update and enables third-party virtualization stacks to utilize the Windows Hypervisor for hardware acceleration. If you are using Hyper-V, this stack replaces Intel HAXM as the hypervisor for the Android emulator.

If you run the ANDROID_SDK\emulator\emulator.exe -avd YOURAVD -verbose you might get this output:

emulator: Checking whether Windows Hypervisor Platform (WHPX) is available.
emulator: Could not load library WinHvPlatform.dll
emulator: WHPX is either not available or not installed.
emulator: CPU Acceleration: DISABLED
emulator: CPU Acceleration status: HAXM is not installed on this machine
emulator: ERROR: x86_64 emulation currently requires hardware acceleration!

You could follow the instructions in the above posts to turn off Windows Hypervisor for Google's Android emulator in %USERPROFILE%\.android\advancedFeatures.ini by setting:

WindowsHypervisorPlatform=off