Windows 10: Install Windows 10 Virtual Machine in VirtualBox

How to: Install Windows 10 Virtual Machine in VirtualBox

How to Install Windows 10 as Virtual Machine in VirtualBox


VirtualBox is a cross-platform virtualization application. What does that mean? For one thing, it installs on your existing Intel or AMD-based computers, whether they are running Windows, Mac, Linux or Solaris operating systems. Secondly, it extends the capabilities of your existing computer so that it can run multiple operating systems (inside multiple virtual machines) at the same time. So, for example, you can run Windows and Linux on your Mac, run Windows Server 2008 on your Linux server, run Linux on your Windows PC, and so on, all alongside your existing applications. You can install and run as many virtual machines as you like -- the only practical limits are disk space and memory.

VirtualBox Host System Requirements:

• Reasonably powerful x86 hardware. Any recent Intel or AMD processor should do.
• Memory. Depending on what guest operating systems you want to run, you will need at least 512 MB of RAM (but probably more, and the more the better). Basically, you will need whatever your host operating system needs to run comfortably, plus the amount that the guest operating system needs. So, if you want to run Windows XP on Windows XP, you probably won't enjoy the experience much with less than 1 GB of RAM. If you want to try out Windows Vista in a guest, it will refuse to install if it is given less than 512 MB RAM, so you'll need that for the guest alone, plus the memory your operating system normally needs.
• Hard disk space. While VirtualBox itself is very lean (a typical installation will only need about 30 MB of hard disk space), the virtual machines will require fairly huge files on disk to represent their own hard disk storage. So, to install Windows XP, for example, you will need a file that will easily grow to several GB in size.
• A supported host operating system. Presently, we support Windows (XP and later), many Linux distributions, Mac OS X, Solaris and OpenSolaris.
• A supported guest operating system. Besides the user manual (see below), up-to-date information is available at "Status: Guest OSes".

VirtualBox User manual

For up-to-date details, especially on current operating system support and software requirements, please take a look at the current User Manual (online here).

VirtualBox Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) for end uses

The User FAQ provide common questions and answers not found in the user manual.

VirtualBox HOWTOs and tutorials

The HOWTOs and tutorials section contains documentation submitted by users about how to do interesting things with VirtualBox.

This tutorial will show you how to install either the 32-bit or 64-bit version of Windows 10 as a virtual machine in VirtualBox.




Here's How:

1 If you have not already, download and install the latest version of VirtualBox for your host computer (ex: Windows hosts).
Download




2 If you have not already, download a Windows 10 ISO file, and save it where you like.

3 Open VirtualBox, and click/tap on New. (see screenshot below)



4 Type a name (ex: Windows 10 build 10166) you want for the Windows 10 virtual machine, select Microsoft Windows for the type, and select Windows 10 (32-bit) or Window 10 (64-bit) for what version of Windows 10 you are installing in VirtualBox, and click/tap on Next. (see screenshots below)



5 Select the amount of memory (ex: 4 MB or 4096 KB) in megabytes (1 MB = 1024 KB) to be allocated from your computer (host) for the virtual machine, and click/tap on Next. (see screenshot below)



6 Select (dot) create a virtual hard disk now, and click/tap on Create. (see screenshot below)



7 Select (dot) the type (recommend VHD) of file you would like to use for the virtual hard disk, and click/tap on Next. (see screenshot below)



8 Select (dot) Dynamically allocated or Fixed size for how you want the virtual hard disk to be created, and click/tap on Next. (see screenshot below)



9 Browse to and select the folder where you want the virtual hard disk file to be created at. Be sure that only the full path of the folder shows without the .vhd file included. Next, select the size you want for the virtual hard disk, and click/tap on Create. (see screenshot below)



10 In the Oracle VM VirtualBox Manager, select the new virtual machine (ex: Windows 10 build 10166), click/tap on [Optical Drive] under Storage, and click/tap on Choose disk image. (see screenshot below)



11 Browse to and select the Windows 10 ISO file from step 2 above, and click/tap on Open. (see screenshot below)



12 In the Oracle VM VirtualBox Manager, double click/tap on the new virtual machine (ex: Windows 10 build 10166) to start it. (see screenshot below)



13 You can now pick up at step 6 in the tutorial below to clean install Windows 10 in VirtualBox. (see screenshot below)
How to Clean Install Windows 10




14 When finished, you will be running Windows 10 in VirtualBox. (see screenshot below)




That's it,
Shawn


Related Tutorials

• How to Clean Install Windows 10
• How to Dual Boot Windows 10 with Windows 7 or Windows 8
• How to Upgrade to Windows 10
• How to Setup and Use Hyper-V in Windows 10 for OS Virtualization
• How to Install Windows 10 as Virtual Machine in VMware Player

:)

 

Installing a Virtual Machine in Windows 10

Step #1 is to decide which virtual machine software you wish to install.

The three most popular choices are:

• VirtualBox (from Oracle)
• VMWare Workstation Player (from VMWare); and
• Hyper-V (from Microsoft)

Once you've made your choice you can find detailed, illustrated instructions for installing each one on the internet.

As a personal suggestion: You might find it easier to use either VirtualBox or VMWare Workstation Player. Hyper-V is more complicated to setup.

Between VirtualBox and VMWare, I think you'll find VirtualBox more user-friendly, and it has the advantage of allowing you to create checkpoints - backups of your virtual machine - whereas to do that in VMWare you'll need to upgrade to their (expensive!)
paid version.

 

Installing Windows10 on VirtualBox virtual machine

Hi, I have created a virtual machine (using VirtualBox) on my Windows 10 Professional 10.0.17134.285 Surface Pro computer

and would like to operate Windows 10 on that VM. (The purpose is to run Excel 64 bit

within that machine. The physical machine is already running Excel 32 bit - I need to run

both). I am having problems activating Windows 10 within the VM - are you able to help?

Thanks.

 

Install Mac OSX into virtual machine

Is there anyway to setup mac osx into a virtual machine?

i.e. making a virtual machine using virtualbox?

 

Clean install of W10 not possible in Virtual Machine.


@Kari

You can do clean install with windows 10 but it won't activate on Virtual Machine at least it didn't on mine. I followed the proper steps to do that.

Again I will repeat what I did step by step with some additions.

Step 1 Installed windows 7 retail on a virtual box, it activated without issue.
Step 2 changed the virtual box description to windows 10
Step 3 upgrade to windows 10 and it activated without issue
Step 4 backed up (So I could go back to it later)
Step 5 Removed windows 10.
Step 6 created a new virtual machine
Step 7 Installed clean windows 10 and it didn't activate and did that error code see below.


@night-hawk had a similar issue and got the same error code

Error code: 0xC004C003 with the specified product key being blocked

Night Hawk does it make a difference on what version of Virtual box that you are using?

My testing was done on Xubuntu using VirtualBox Graphical user interface version 4.3.26-Ubuntu r98988

 

Installing Windows 10 on a virtual machine

Which virtual machine software you using?

How long did you wait?

How much memory is allocated to the virtual machine?

How
to: install the latest Windows 10 Build in Oracle VirtualBox

How
to setup a virtual machine using Hyper-V