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- #Windows virtual pc download windows 10 how to#
- #Windows virtual pc download windows 10 zip file#
- #Windows virtual pc download windows 10 full#
Microsoft has added several new features to Windows Virtual PC to make it easy to use and to help you run many older Windows XP applications in Windows 7. You will lose any settings or software you installed into the copy of Windows, but as it is used only for test purposes, it does not matter. It utilizes virtualization technology, such as Windows Virtual PC, to provide a virtual Windows XP environment for Windows 7. However, you can delete the virtual machine and import a fresh copy from the downloaded file and get another 90 days use, repeating this forever. You basically get the trial version and they run for up to 90 days and then stop working. There is another catch and this is that these versions of Windows are time-limited. The selected version of Windows then runs in a window on the desktop. Select the virtual machine and click the Start button. You can tweak some more, but that is enough to get you started. Similarly, you can increase the video memory in the Display section too. XP, used in this example, is configured to use 512MB of RAM, but increasing this to 1024MB (1GB) enables it to run better.
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Select the virtual machine and click the Settings button.
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The virtual machine is ready to use, but it comes preconfigured with the minimum specification. This is how ready-made virtual machines downloaded from the internet are added to the software.īrowse the disk and select the file that was extracted from the downloaded zip file. Start VirtualBox, go to the File menu and select Import Appliance. This extracts the contents and saves it to a folder of the same name in the same location.
#Windows virtual pc download windows 10 zip file#
When the download is complete, right click the zip file and select Extract All. Ideally you need a fast internet connection to download them. The file is downloaded as a zip file and it is big! Windows XP is 1GB and Windows 10 is around 5GB. Then select the appropriate platform in the list, such as VirtualBox. If you do not already have virtual machine software, go and download VirtualBox or VMware Player. There’s just Win 7, Win 8.1 and Win 10 now.) (Update: XP, Vista, Win 8 have been removed. Select a virtual machine such as IE8 on XP shown here.
#Windows virtual pc download windows 10 how to#
Here is a step by step guide showing how to download and install any version of Windows. You don’t have to run Internet Explorer and these are fully working versions of Windows, so you can install and run any software. There are many different versions of Internet Explorer and in order for website developers to test their sites and make sure they work for everyone, they can fire up a virtual machine like on Windows 7 and check whether Internet Explorer 8, 9 and 10 work, or Internet Explorer 6 and 8 on XP. So why is Microsoft giving away Windows? The answer is for testing purposes.
#Windows virtual pc download windows 10 full#
It is in a window on the desktop, but you can make it full screen so it looks and works like the real thing.
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In the case of a virtual machine, the hardware emulated is a PC and you can run any version of Windows (or Linux, but that is a different story). A virtual machine is a bit like an emulator that lets you run Gameboy, Comodore 64, Atari and other devices on your computer. Software such as VirtualBox, VMware and others, are able to run an operating system in a window on the desktop or even full screen. Free copies of Windows? What is the catch? Yes there is a catch of course and what Microsoft is doing is giving away virtual machines.
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