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Free Windows XP-10 VirtualBox/Parallels Images from Microsoft
- taspeotis 11y agoMicrosoft have been offering virtual machines for years now [1]. I know they offered Virtual PC and VirtualBox previously, is the news that Parallels is now supported? [1] http://superuser.com/q/109944/23461 http://superuser.com/q/109944/23461
- jagtesh 11y agoNope. They've offered Parallels for years too.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- Cuuugi 11y agoI mean, I don't know when they released windows 10 VM's, that might be new.
- jagtesh 11y agoNot that either (proof: https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2015/08/17/windows-10-virtual-machines-now-available-on-microsoft-edge-dev/ https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2015/08/17/windows-10-vi...) Let's face it, this was a click bait (esp the free bit) and we all fell for it.
- carbocation 11y agoSince most of us seemed not to know about it, and since this could be useful to many of us, it's not totally clear to me that "click bait" applies here.
- dohboy 11y agoJust because you didn't knew does not makes it any less click bait.
- thecatspaw 11y agoIm not sure how the title is click-bait, can you explain? For me click-bait would mean "Microsoft releases software for free! You will never believe what the 4th iso contains!" or something to that effect
- dewiz 11y agohaters gonna hate, some people don't like to see "Microsoft" and "free" in the same sentence, unless it's something bad about the company. Of course MS does this for its own business, and why not, that doesn't make it any click-bait title...
- dave2000 11y agoDon't be a twat. Someone posted a link to genuinely useful info that many people wouldn't have been aware of. So it's not linkbait. Look up the definition.
- Piskvorrr 11y agoWell, it is "free as in beer", with some strings attached (90-day usage limit, no production use); still very useful for testing (this used to be at modern.ie, apparently moved to a new address).
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- rbanffy 11y agoModern.ie redirects to this, not sure since when.
- manarth 11y agoThis just shows the importance of having date metatags - e.g. dc.date.created. How old is this content…is it new? Was it published a day ago, a month ago, a year ago? I guess we'll never know.
- timdorr 11y agoEach download has a build number that is a date: 20150801
- Dolores12 11y agothey used to have a website made especially for that at https://modern.ie https://modern.ie
- Piskvorrr 11y agoNow redirects to the URL given in the submission. Not much to see here.
- nailer 11y agoIf you're on a Mac and want to use OS X's inbuilt virtualization, the VMware Fusion images work on Veertu.
- orionblastar 11y ago90 day limited demo version of Windows. Make sure you back up the original image in case your demo expires and you need to restore the image from the original. I remember Microsoft used to offer ISOS of Windows with a 90 day limited trial key. There was a utility that would reset the demo clock as well as a command line option to reset it for another 90 days.
- ikeboy 11y agoYou can rearm these VMs as IIRC up to 180 days.
- trentmb 11y agoCan I register a valid XP key with it?
- Cuuugi 11y agoDepends on the type of key you have. If it is a PRO(i am assuming that's the version of OS)/non-OEM license, then you shouldn't have a problem. Definitely worth a short though.
- orionblastar 11y agoI don't see why not, as long as the license for that key matches the OS. A friend of mine used to buy COA stickers from eBay that had XP keys on them for like $10 each. They are OEM keys so he used an OEM XP CD-ROM to install them with the keys on used systems. They would activate even if they have been used before. If activations run out you can call Microsoft and have them reset. Windows 10 Keys are different, locked to the hardware. Windows XP keys can be transferred to a different system.
- ocdtrekkie 11y agoJust because you :can: do this doesn't mean it isn't a violation of the software license.
- rangibaby 11y ago
- chris_wot 11y agoAh, hopefully one day the ReactOS project will be sufficient and not require these dodgy VMs. In particular, I'd love to install ReactOS and build LibreOffice, er, natively.
- cobalt 11y agowhy are they dodgy?
- CamperBob2 11y agoThese are just intended for testing. A ReactOS installation wouldn't be useful for testing an app or web page against Windows.
- bigiain 11y agoI know I'm old, but a 5Gig download just to run Edge on OS X? (And that's a 5Gug zipfile, I wonder how much of my SSD that's gonna eat unzipped?) In the plus side, Chrome says "6 minutes left", and I've only just clicked download. I suspect my network bandwidth improvements over the years make this no less an imposition than the outrageous 200+Kb download for Doom over a 14.4k modem...)
- skrebbel 11y agoOh poor you. If I want to test my app on OSX safari I have to either buy a mac or find a hipster.
- kyriakos 11y ago+1 for this. At least Microsoft gives us the option.
- DiThi 11y agoI feel your pain. A (pirated) hackintosh VM doesn't cut it, as I need 3D acceleration to test a very complex WebGL app. And it's the slowest browser from the bunch. Safari is the new IE6 for me. I hate it with passion.
- venomsnake 11y agoGPU passtrough?
- jmnicolas 11y agoFrom what I gathered you have 2 solutions for GPU passtrough : if you're a Unix guru and have plenty of time to spare you might make it work with Xen or if you have money VMWare looks easier but you may need a license and special hardware (if you have a regular Nvidia graphic card it won't work, you need an ATI or a Nvidia Quadro).
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- donatj 11y agoI've used these for years in Web Development, they're invaluable.
- mozumder 11y agoThese don't "auto-update" to the latest Edge browser, do they?
- ineedtosleep 11y agoThey don't (or shouldn't). I've been using the IE8-IE10 images for a long while now and nothing ever auto updates.
- Sanddancer 11y agoThat would defeat the purpose of them having a large range of images available. These images are made so you can spin them up, test the site with a range of IE/Windows combos, and then spin things down again.
- danielrm26 11y agoWhat's the licensing situation for these VMs? What can I use them for, for how long, and what limitations are in place?
- rms_returns 11y agoEven if the licensing terms were liberal, are you going to use an OS that hasn't been issued system updates since ages? It will be riddled with malware the moment you connect to the Internet!
- PietdeVries 11y agoI would almost say "challenge accepted" - this calls for a little test! I don't believe that the images that Microsoft made available are so vulnerable as-they-are that they will be infected within hours...
- tdicola 11y agoYou must not remember some of the more memorable worms like blaster. It was a complete nightmare and would own machines that weren't behind a firewall in minutes. Luckily long since patched, but it's only a matter of time for others.
- PietdeVries 11y agoTrue - those were the days... However, I believe these OS-es come with certain presets that will not expose them to the wild-internet immediately. I assume (yes - assume) that MS has enabled the firewalls per default on these images, so unless you use them to browse to certain "entertainment sites" you should be quite ok... Edit: ok, ran a lab-test (so not the real thing): Windows XP with IE6 on one VM, Kali with Armitage on the other. A "Hail Mary" of 22 exploits did not result in any session on the windows machine...
- uulbiy 11y agoActually, you can update with windows update. It will take a lot of time though.
- trm42 11y agoSo the main point seems to be MS has killed modern.ie -site and redirect to this dev.windows.com site. Still useful once in a while although the big disk images are PITA to download and setup. I have better uses for my laptop SSD than to fill it with different IEs and Windowses :p
- dzhiurgis 11y agoXP is 1.25GB while W7 is 4GB. That is nothing compared to how useful they are every so often.
- hexsprite 11y agoI use a service like browserstack instead for the occasions I need to test on IE
- Piskvorrr 11y agoMuch more convenient, indeed. Hard to take offline though ;)
- pmontra 11y agoCan you use it to test sites on localhost, maybe through a ssh tunnel?
- tracker1 11y agoThere are tools for this.. iirc BrowserStack is a service on top of Selenium WebDriver, and there's tooling for it in the node ecosystem. IIRC, there's decent Ruby tooling, but I prefer to do all my browser related things in JS.
- stephenr 11y agoDepending on your model of laptop, you can probably get reasonable speed from expansion storage for rarely used images like these. I opted for the 128GB SSD in my MBP (last 17" model, from late 2011) and a few years later I added a 128GB ExpressCard SSD, which i use pretty much exclusively for (largely Linux, largely via Vagrant) Virtual Machine images. Sure, I'll definitely order a bigger built-in SSD on the replacement, but on a newer machine without ExpressCard you could also use a USB3 flash drive or (if you are on a mac) a Thunderbolt SSD device.
- ac29 11y agoCorrection: free limited Windows VM images for testing Microsoft browsers. You can't just throw these on a copy of your favorite virtualization platform and have a free copy of Windows to legally do whatever you'd like with, indefinitely.
- godzillabrennus 11y agoIndeed. Better off using http://browserling.com http://browserling.com to test.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
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- wyuenho 11y agoAt some point someone is going to have ask the questions: Who is gaming HN, why is this news and at the top spot of HackerNews? MS has been offering this for years and yet every once in a while I see posts similar to this on the front page.
- minitech 11y agoSurprisingly, not everyone is aware of everything that has ever been on the front page of HN.
- rossy 11y agoIt's probably not the intended use case, but I use these more often for testing desktop applications than for testing web pages. It's a shame there's no 64-bit VMs.
- brian-armstrong 11y agoI used the Edge image to test Web Audio in Edge and it was perfect. I was able to test my entire web app.
- 8draco8 11y agoOn a OSX/Linux I was always using https://github.com/xdissent/ievms https://github.com/xdissent/ievms to get Windows VM that I want.
- ck2 11y agoCan the vmware converter make these work?
- TorKlingberg 11y agoThere is no IE11 on Windows 10 VM. It seems Microsoft are very committed to Edge. Or is this to avoid misuse of the testing VMs?
- jayflux 11y agoIt wouldn't make sense as most users would never use ie 11 on Windows 10. It's possible, but it's hidden in the menu. Just get an Edge for Windows 10 VM and use the IE 11 on that, it should be there.
- ubanholzer 11y agoif you want to use it with Vagrant: https://github.com/whatwedo/vagrant-ievms https://github.com/whatwedo/vagrant-ievms
- michaelbuddy 11y agoare these still time limited? Because I'd rather have the desktop with feature limits than time limits. Having to reinstall the VM because of a 30-day limit is just a waste of time.