No-hassle way to install Windows x with VirtualBox

Hither'southward the best fashion to test out Windows 10 without harming your car.

Contributing Editor, ITworld |

Want to examination out Windows 10 Technical Preview, but don't want to accept a chance it'll kill your PC? Your all-time bet is to install it as a virtual machine using VirtualBox. Information technology's easier to do than yous might think. Here are step-by-footstep instructions about how to do it.

1. Install VirtualBox

VirtualBox runs on Windows machines, Macs, and Linux machines, and then you'll be able to install Windows 10 in only about whatsoever platform. Get it from here, download it, and install it. No special instructions needed.

2. Get the Windows x Technical Preview ISO File

Caput to this page to get information technology. When y'all go in that location, click "Become started," and follow the instructions and prompts until you finally get to the download page. Choose your linguistic communication and whether you want to download the 32-bit or 64-chip version. I downloaded the 64-bit version, because I installed it on a 64-bit automobile. Some people have reported problems with installing the 64-flake version with VirtualBox, but my installation went without a hitch. Write downwardly where you downloaded the ISO file, because you'll need to know that afterwards.

3. Start the installation

Run VirtualBox and click the New icon on the upper-left side of the motorcar. From the screen that appears, blazon Windows 10 in the name field. So from the Version drop-down box, select Windows viii.one, and choose either the 32-scrap or 64-fleck version, depending on the ISO you downloaded.

4. Select the amount of RAM

Next you'll be prompted to select how much RAM yous desire to devote to your Windows 10 virtual machine. You'll be shown a recommended amount of RAM. You tin change information technology if you want, just I've used VirtualBox for several years and have created many virtual machines, and I've found its recommendations to be on target. So unless you know what yous're doing and take a very good reason to change it, accept the recommendation.

5. Create a Virtual Hard Drive

In order to install Windows 10, you'll accept to create a virtual hard bulldoze for installing it. So from the screen that appears after you've selected the corporeality of RAM, click "Create a virtual hard drive." Choose VDI (VirtualBox Disk Image) as the file type. For the blazon of drive, you'll take a choice between ane that is a fixed size and i that dynamically allocates space, that is, it grows larger if the operating organization needs it. Your best bet is to choose a fixed size. That offers meliorate performance. Click "Create" after yous've made your choices.

6. Select your ISO as the startup deejay

Afterward yous create the virtual hard drive, yous'll be sent back to the VirtualBox chief screen. Click the Start push button. You'll be asked to "Select commencement-up disk." Head to where you downloaded the Windows 10 ISO file, click "Commencement," and the installation begins.

7. Cease installing Windows 10

From hither on in, it's just like any normal Windows installation, with the usual occasional reboots. The reboots happen inside VirtualBox, not on your machine itself. There'southward only one important option you need to make --- select "Custom: Install Windows only (advanced)" when you're given a choice between that and a standard installation.

8. Plough on the Start Menu

After the installation, Windows x will run as a virtual machine. But there volition appear to exist one thing missing: You may not see the new Windows Showtime Carte du jour, which is for many people the whole point of Windows ten. You'll have to tell Windows to use it. To do that, right-click the taskbar and select Properties -->First Menu. So click "Utilize the Start Bill of fare instead of the Showtime screen." After y'all practise that, you'll accept to log out of Windows 10, then back in once again. But after that, yous'll run across the new Start Menu in all of its celebrity.

This story, "No-hassle way to install Windows 10 with VirtualBox" was originally published past ITworld .

Preston Gralla is a contributing editor for Computerworld and the author of more than 45 books, including Windows 8 Hacks (O'Reilly, 2012) and How the Internet Works (Que, 2006).

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