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I've had to set up a SharePoint 2010 Virtual machine for upcoming projects. The problem is that SharePoint 2010 requires Windows 2008 server 64bit.

OK, no problem... I've got a 64 bit machine. Hmmm.... But at the time of reformatting my machine I didn't have the 64-bit Ubuntu with me, so I installed the 32 bit.

So... the question is can you install a 64 bit guest on top of a 32 bit host? Yes! Well, at least using VirtualBox - I can't really comment on other virtual technologies. The other thing is that my physical CPU is a Intel p8600 64-bit processor with VT-x

In order to get it to work, I had to enable a setting in the BIOS which allowed Virtual Box to Virtualise a 64 bit machine. This was achieved by rebooting my machine, entering the BIOS and checking the following to fields under the Virtualisation section:

Virtualisation: "This field specifies whether a Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM) can utilize the additional hardware capabilities provided by Intel(R) Virtualization Technology."

and

VT for Direct I/O: "This field specifies whether a Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM) can utilize the additional hardware capabilities provided by Intel(R) Virtualization Technology for Direct I/O."

In order to get VirtualBox to actually recognise this, I had to reboot the machine a few times - Very weird... But thhen suddenly, it worked! (Just make sure that you enable the settings for the specific virtual machine in VirtualBox as well. )