I need to detect whether my application is running within a virtualized OS instance or not.

I&#39;ve found &lt;A HREF=&quot;http://www.codeproject.com/KB/system/VmDetect.aspx&quot;&gt;an article&lt;/A&gt; with some useful information on the topic. The same article appears in multiple places, I&#39;m unsure of the original source. &lt;A HREF=&quot;http://www.vmware.com/&quot;&gt;VMware&lt;/A&gt; implements a particular invalid x86 instruction to return information about itself, while &lt;A HREF=&quot;http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/virtualpc/default.mspx&quot;&gt;VirtualPC&lt;/A&gt; uses a magic number and I/O port with an IN instruction.

This is workable, but appears to be undocumented behavior in both cases. I suppose a future release of VMWare or VirtualPC might change the mechanism. Is there a better way? Is there a supported mechanism for either product?

Similarly, is there a way to detect &lt;A HREF=&quot;http://www.xen.org/&quot;&gt;Xen&lt;/A&gt; or &lt;A HREF=&quot;http://www.virtualbox.org/&quot;&gt;VirtualBox&lt;/A&gt;?

I&#39;m not concerned about cases where the platform is deliberately trying to hide itself. For example, honeypots use virtualization but sometimes obscure the mechanisms that malware would use to detect it. I don&#39;t care that my app would think it is not virtualized in these honeypots, I&#39;m just looking for a &quot;best effort&quot; solution.

The application is mostly Java, though I&#39;m expecting to use native code plus JNI for this particular function. Windows XP/Vista support is most important, though the mechanisms described in the referenced article are generic features of x86 and don&#39;t rely on any particular OS facility.

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Detect virtualized OS from an application?