If you want to play with Windows 10 or Office 2016 but aren't ready to abandon Windows 7
or 8 or Office 2013 just yet, there's an easy solution: a virtual
machine. Broadly speaking, a virtual machine (VM) is a sandbox that
tricks one operating system into running inside another.
Setup
requires a more-than-entry-level PC, since you'll be running two
resource-hungry OSes at once. But a virtual machine is well worth the
effort, because it means fewer headaches than fully upgrading to beta
software or running a second version of Windows on a drive partition.
Also, if a VM gets a virus or starts acting weird, you can just delete
it and reinstall, assuming it doesn't contain any important data. There are a number of virtual machine apps you can choose from, but for simplicity's sake, this tutorial sticks to VirtualBox. These instructions are for Windows 7 and 8.1, but you can apply this process to other Windows versions.
What you need:
1. A CPU prepped for running a virtual machine.
2. A broadband Internet connection to download up to 4GB of files.
3. 50GB or more of free space on your PC.
4. Up to one hour of free time.
Step 1: Verify virtual machine support
Oddly,
your CPU's virtualization features are often disabled by default.
Fixing that can be a hassle, but the process of getting Windows 10 up
and running in a virtual machine gets easier after this step. To make
sure that virtualization is enabled in your hardware, you need to go
into the motherboard BIOS interface. To do that, hit the F2 or Delete
key while your PC is booting up. The timing can be tricky if you have a
solid-state drive, because your window of opportunity is only a few
seconds.
If F2 and Delete don't work, you may need to try F10 or
F12 -- your motherboard manual will tell you. If you don't have your
manual, you can usually download it from the manufacturer's website. If
you don't know who made your motherboard or which model it is, download Speccy
and click the Motherboard tab. If you have a laptop, the model is
usually printed on the device itself. Then you can Google the
motherboard name to find the manual, which will also show you where in
the BIOS you will find the setting to toggle your CPU's virtualization
settings. Once you've enabled virtualization in the BIOS, press F10
(unless the manual tells you to use a different key) to save your
settings and reboot.
You may have a basic BIOS with no CPU
virtualization setting. In that case, just hit the Escape key to leave
the BIOS and boot into Windows.
Step 2: Download Windows 10 Insider Preview
There
are two ways to get Windows 10: (1) install it as an upgrade to your
current OS (Windows Vista, 7, or 8.1) or (2) download an ISO file. An
ISO is a package of files that's usually installed from an optical disc,
but a virtual machine basically tricks your computer into thinking that
the files are on a CD or DVD. The virtual machine will install the
ISO's contents much faster than an optical drive can. Go to Microsoft's
site to get the Windows 10 ISO. Sign up as a Windows Insider, if you haven't already, and choose your file language.
Next, select either the 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) version. If
you're not sure which one is compatible with your PC, hold down the
Windows key and press the Pause/Break key to bring up the System window.
Look for the System type entry, which will tell you if you have 64-bit
or 32-bit Windows: 64-bit Windows can use either ISO, but 32-bit Windows
can use only the 32-bit ISO. If you plan to test 64-bit software or to
dedicate more than 4GB of system RAM to your virtual machine, you'll
need 64-bit Windows running on your PC. Some
older CPUs cannot support a 64-bit virtual machine, even if the CPU is
technically 64 bits. If you bought your PC more than five years ago, we
recommend Googling your CPU (revisit the instructions in Step 1 to find
your CPU name in the System) to check if it has 64-bit guest support.
The guest is the OS running inside the virtual machine. The host is the
computer the VM is running on.
Step 3: Get your virtual machine software
While your ISO is downloading, you can queue up VirtualBox. Once that's downloaded, install it and set it up for Windows 10.
With
the program open, click the New button in the upper-left corner to get
started. Name the virtual machine anything you like. The second entry
field will default to Windows, if you use that word in the description
above it, or you can select Windows from the drop-down menu. In the
Version menu, select Windows 10 (32-bit) or Windows 10 (64-bit),
depending on which ISO you downloaded.
Now you select your
system RAM usage. The green section of the slider is considered safe,
and the red zone may cause performance issues. We'd recommend at least
2GB of RAM, preferably 4GB. But if you have only 4GB to start with, give
the virtual machine 2GB. If you have 6GB of system RAM, 3GB is great.
Click Next, and you'll be asked to create a virtual hard drive. You're
installing a full operating system, so you'll need a healthy amount of
room on your PC's storage device. The default for Windows 10 is 32GB; we
recommend at least 25GB to install Windows 10 correctly. Click Create
to go to the next menu. If you want to use more or less space, click
Hide Description to open an advanced menu with a slider. Click Show
Description to return to the hard drive file-type selection. It defaults
to VDI, which is fine for basic testing. Other types are compatible
with other VM software, such as VMware or Parallels.
Click
Next, and you'll see that VirtualBox defaults to dynamic allocation. As
the description states, this method will not automatically take up all
32GB (or whatever size you chose). Choosing Fixed size will immediately
take up all the drive space that you reserved for the virtual machine.
The next window will ask you to confirm the name and size of the VM.
Click Create to finish setting up the essentials.
Step 4: Make optional tweaks
The
tweaks in this step are optional. All VM apps have customizable
settings to improve performance and change how the guest (the virtual
machine) interacts with the host (your computer). In the left-hand
column of VirtualBox's interface, you'll see the new VM you just set up.
It's preselected, since you presumably have no other VMs to choose from
right now, so just hit the Settings button to start tweaking. Settings
sends you to a General menu, where most options will be grayed out when
the VM is running, so you need to set it all up before you've booted it.
There are lots of things that you can fiddle with here, but we'll focus
on a few highlights.
First, click the Advanced tab to look at how
the guest (VM) can talk to the host (PC). If you want to copy and paste
between the two, go to Shared Clipboard and select Bidirectional from
the drop-down menu. You can also choose your drag-and-drop behavior from
the drop-down menu right below that. Since the VM version of Windows
can't see the other storage devices and drive partitions on your PC,
you'll need drag and drop to transfer files between the guest and the
host. Now
click the System item in the left-hand column. Click the Processor tab
to choose how many CPU threads you want to dedicate to the VM.
VirtualBox defaults to one thread to stay on the safe side. But if you
have more threads in the green zone, you can select them here by moving
the slider to the right.
The last point of interest is the Display
menu, again listed in the left-hand column. On the Video tab, you can
increase how much video memory the VM uses, and you can enable
acceleration. (Acceleration can create visual glitches, though, so you
must disable it later.) As before, choices within the green zone
shouldn't have a negative performance impact on the host PC, unless
you're doing processing-intensive tasks while running the VM. Once
you've made your selections in the three areas of the Settings menu that
we've talked about here, click OK to save your changes.
Step 5: Set up the ISO
Now
you're ready to boot your virtual copy of Windows 10. In the left
column of VirtualBox, double-click your virtual machine to start it, as
if it was a Windows installation disc. VirtualBox will ask for the
location of your ISO. Don't remember where you downloaded it? In Google
Chrome or Mozilla Firefox, press Ctrl-J to open the Downloads menu. Your
downloaded files will be listed in chronological order. In Chrome,
click Show in folder. In Firefox, hover your mouse pointer over the ISO
and double-click to open its folder.
Want to get fancy? Click the
folder location in Windows Explorer and press Ctrl-C to copy the
location. Go back to VirtualBox, click the little folder icon with the
green arrow, click the location window, and press Ctrl-C to paste the
ISO's location. Press the Enter key to go to the ISO's folder. Select
the ISO and click Open. If you don't want to try this copy-paste trick,
you'll need to manually navigate to the folder containing the ISO.
Once
you've set up your ISO location, click the Start button in VirtualBox's
main window to run your VM copy of Windows 10. After a few seconds,
you'll see a light blue Windows icon on a black background. The ISO is
setting up the installer. This may take a few minutes, depending on how
speedy your PC is. Then the screen will go black, and you'll see several
menus on a purple background. Click the Next button and select Install
Now. VirtualBox will tell you about available settings to detect key
presses and mouse pointers in the guest (VM). Click the blue-and-white X
button in the upper right to make those messages go away. Microsoft
will ask you to agree to an end-user license agreement. Check the box if
you agree, and click Next.
Step 6: Install Windows 10 in your VM
You
have two installation options. Select the Custom option (the second
one) and click Next to install Windows in the VM. This step can take a
long time, depending on your computer's speed. Our test systems have
solid-state storage devices and a dual-core laptop CPU with
Hyper-threading, so for us installation took less than five minutes -- a
lot faster than installing Windows from a DVD. You're
almost done! The VM may reboot a few times while it sets up, and then
you'll see an operating system setup menu on a white background. You can
use express settings here or go through each choice -- you can always
adjust these settings later. To do that, finish installing Windows, then
click the Windows icon in the lower left-hand corner of the screen,
choose Settings, and click Privacy.
In the next section, tell the
installer that this PC belongs to you, then sign in with your Microsoft
account. Don't have one or don't want to use one? Hit the Sign Up button
and choose Connect My Account Later. Now give Windows a username to log
in with, decide if you want to set a password, and click Next. (You may
get an error right after you click Next, but we clicked the OK button,
and Windows kept installing.) Windows will take a few minutes to make
some final adjustments in the background, and then you'll finally be on
the Windows 10 desktop.
From here, you can do anything you want,
but we recommend checking for updates first. To do that, click the
Windows icon in the lower left-hand corner, choose Settings in the upper
left of the menu that pops up (yes, the Windows Start menu is back),
and select Update & Security. This will automatically check for the
latest updates for Windows 10.
There's one last optional item you
can try: installing Guest Additions (GA) so that you have more
aspect-ratio choices for your VM window, or so that you can maximize the
VM window and have it automatically scale to the corect resolution for
your display. VirtualBox version 4.3.26, which we used for this
tutorial, wouldn't scale with GA on our test laptops running Windows 7
and 8.1, but you may have better luck. With the Windows 10 VM running,
click the Devices menu at the top of the window, select CD/DVD Devices,
and select Remove Disk From Virtual Drive. This disk is just the ISO
that you used to install Windows, which you don't need anymore.
Next,
in the Devices menu, go to the bottom and select Insert Guest Additions
CD image. Windows will pop up a notification in the lower right-hand
corner of the screen. Click it and select the first option (the one with
the VirtualBox icon next to it). Click Yes, Next, Next again, and
Install to start the process. Windows will ask you to confirm some
device-driver installations. Click the Install button to do that. The
VM's screen may flicker a few times. This is normal. Finally, click
Finish to reboot with the Guest Additions installed.
Step 7: Run Windows 10
You're
now done setting up your virtual machine and Windows 10. You can shut
down Windows 10 by clicking the Windows icon, selecting Power, and
choosing Shut Down. To quickly run the VM next time, go back to
VirtualBox's Manager screen, which comes up when you launch the
software, right-click your VM in the left-hand column, and choose Create
Shortcut on Desktop. That lets you skip the Manager screen and directly
boot the VM from your host computer's desktop.
Now that you have a
sandboxed version of Windows 10 running inside your main operating
system, you can do things like test virus/malware protection or run
experimental software without worrying about wrecking your whole system.
You can learn how to navigate Windows 10 and decide if you like it
before committing to the full upgrade or a fresh installation. You can
check out Microsoft Edge, previously known as Project Spartan,
which will replace Internet Explorer. Edge is preinstalled in Windows
10 and is supposed to support add-ons intended for Firefox and Chrome,
so it's worth checking out. You can use your VM to test the preview
version of Microsoft Office 2016,
which would otherwise require you to uninstall your current copy of
Office first. If you told VirtualBox to use the default 32GB
installation of Windows 10, you have about 22GB left over after Windows
is installed, so there's lots of room to play in your sandbox.
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