Anyone ran Win 10 in Virtual box ?

BADGER.BRAD

BADGER.BRAD

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Hello all,

O'k so it's been 10 to 15 years since I've used any form of Windows software. XP was my last but today whilst looking at Youtube I randomly came across Virtual Box ( connected with online privacy) I realized that this would be a good way of trying to workout how Windows works and other operating systems and generally having a play with Windows. Has anyone ever done it this way and did Windows work o.k ?

Thanks all

Brad
 
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Haven’t done this, but you can download and install windows from the Microsoft site without a license key. It will work happily but gives you a few restrictions such as stating in the bottom right hand corner”this copy of windows is not activated” and denies you some of the personalisation options and unable to access Microsoft support(not that I have ever done this) . Doing this you could just create a partition on your hard drive and install it normally as a dual boot to test.
 
I've done it (though more often with Linux in the VM) and it works pretty well. But it can be fiddly to configure and it's a bit of a moving target - Virtualbox or OS upgrades break things from time to time. You can play with the latest beta version of Windows without restrictions if you join the free 'Insider Program' (these versions expire, but then you have the next one to fiddle with):

insider.windows.com

Windows Insider Program

Become an Insider: be one of the first to explore new Windows features for you and your business or use the latest Windows SDK to build great apps.
insider.windows.com
 
I've used Windows a lot virtualized under a host operating system of some kind, in fact I'm doing that almost exclusively at work at the moment as I've set up a complex lab environment for a development project, but under VMWare (ESXi / vSphere).

I did use Virtual box a few years ago to test / debug a client problem running Windows under it (problem with my software, not Windows) and it was fine. For getting a feel for Windows I'm sure it would be OK.
 
Thanks everyone, I managed to get XP working but the later versions just don't want to , I repbooted my system and then XP gave up so as surgested it apears a bit fiddly, As my intrest is more in XP ( so I can run some old software) I think as pointed out I may be better dual booting the two systems. Doing an internet search on XP suprised me that there are still a lot of people using it.
 
I've used VirtualBox for years with many OS inc Win XP, 7, 10 and Linux mint.
In fact this is Win 7 running in VirtualBox installed on Linux Mint 18.3 running on a Z800.
Once you get used to using them Virtual Machines are excellent.
EDIT
Many years ago I used Nlite to gut XP and created a 1GB Virtual Machine to turn my DVDs into X-Vids.
Since the machines are so small I can a huge amount at the same time on my Z840 with 128GB RAM.
Recently I ran 36 machines simultaneously with no problems at all.
You can also clone a VirtualBox machine to produce an IDENTICAL copy - or as many as you want (in my case 36 copies)
 
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BADGER.BRAD said:
Thanks everyone, I managed to get XP working but the later versions just don't want to , I repbooted my system and then XP gave up so as surgested it apears a bit fiddly, As my intrest is more in XP ( so I can run some old software) I think as pointed out I may be better dual booting the two systems. Doing an internet search on XP suprised me that there are still a lot of people using it.
Click to expand...
You can't run XP on modern machines as the architecture is different - older machines may run it but it's much better to install it in a Virtual Machine using Virtual Box (Use the 32 bit option)
In a VM you should have no problems.
 
petersmart said:
Once you get used to using them Virtual Machines are excellent.
Click to expand...

There is just one major issue. No colour management support. The insides look terrible on wide gamut monitor. And that was me hoping I could run photoshop inside a VM on a linux host. The idea of running windows as a base OS is seriously uncomfortable to me.
 
Well I run Linux and Win 10 on the same host - I install Linux on a 128 GB SSD and Win 10 on another 256GB SSD and set the Bios to boot into Linux and from there I can choose either Linux or Windows - Works perfectly.
 
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