How long can I use this VM?

Tiburcio · 19 Nov 2016

Hi all

It´s a first time that I make a virtual box. I came here following the thread "How to Install Windows 10 Virtual Machine in VirtualBox" and the installation occurred as expected except for two items:

a) The wireless network adapter configuration was successful without any configuration (good for me!)

b) The click/tap on the PIN me! button didn´t work (I understood that I had to enter a password at the time to set the PIN and the installation keyboard wasn´t working), so I chose to enter a microsoft account (*) and it was Ok.

So, these little questions didn´t compromise the tutorial and the installation was successful and works very well, the windows 10 x64 pro virtual works normal, I can turn on and off the virtual machine install, software such as antivirus (one of the products I want to test here), browse by web, etc...

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My idea is to use this Virtual Box just to TEST third-party updates and software, because I have a windows 10 pro license that I use normally and this version of windows has so many news and I don´t want to "take risks" in my original installation. Recently had a problem that caused me a huge waste of time to revert ...

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My doubts are:

1) It is possible? It's legal? Is there a cool way to test software before installing on the original windows?

2) I used the "click / tap on I do not have a product key to manually activate Windows 10 later", because I do not think it's possible to use my own key that is enabled on this computer, okay?

3) If this is possible and made the correct choice in question 2 above, how long can I use this VM without activating windows 10? Will I need a key? Is the virtual machine going to crash because of this?

(*) In doubt, I used a different microsoft account than the one I use in my actual installation.

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Greetings

cereberus · 23 Nov 2016

1) it is legal

2) it will not expire as far as is known

3) you cannot personalise install but no big deal really.

4) It will work fine.

5) recommend hyper-v if using pro. If home, recommsnd vmware over virtualbox.

Cliff S · 23 Nov 2016

Another option where you can get fully functional Windows 10 VMs(and Win7 & Win8.1 for that matter) that run for 90days, then expire. But you can roll back, legally...
Free Virtual Machines from IE8 to MS Edge - Microsoft Edge Development

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Microsoft Edge on Win 10 Stable (14.14393)
Microsoft Edge on Win 10 Preview (15.14959)
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Please note that these virtual machines expire after 90 days. We recommend setting a snapshot when you first install the virtual machine which you can roll back to later.
Mac Users: You need to use a tool that supports zip64 like The Unarchiver to unzip the files.

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The Microsoft Software License Terms for the IE VMs are included in the release notes and supersede any conflicting Windows license terms included in the VMs. By downloading and using this software, you agree to these license terms.

Tiburcio · 23 Nov 2016

cereberus said:

1) it is legal

2) it will not expire as far as is known

3) you cannot personalise install but no big deal really.

4) It will work fine.

5) recommend hyper-v if using pro. If home, recommsnd vmware over virtualbox.

Very grateful for the elucidation.

Asap will do a test first with VMWare (I've already used it for Linux) and maybe later I'll try this Hyper-V, which I didn´t know even if it's a good test option cause I saw a preview of the installation here:

Install Hyper-V and create a virtual machine
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us//li...(v=ws.11).aspx

And found it very complicated; compared to Virtual Box and VMWare ...

Maybe I'll find some time and do it.

greetings

Tiburcio · 23 Nov 2016

Cliff S said:

Another option where you can get fully functional Windows 10 VMs(and Win7 & Win8.1 for that matter) that run for 90days, then expire. But you can roll back, legally...
Free Virtual Machines from IE8 to MS Edge - Microsoft Edge Development

Thanks for the reply.
By personal choice I don´t use the Edge nor as a browser.
It´s the first time I read about it and would hardly imagine the possibility of testing an OS in this way.
Actually the concept of using Edge for virtualization is something I need to assimilate.
Who knows I find a utility, I´ll read more closely the shared article because still "in a first read" I don´t understand how it works

greetings

cereberus · 24 Nov 2016

Tiburcio said:

Very grateful for the elucidation.

Asap will do a test first with VMWare (I've already used it for Linux) and maybe later I'll try this Hyper-V, which I didn´t know even if it's a good test option cause I saw a preview of the installation here:

Install Hyper-V and create a virtual machine
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us//li...(v=ws.11).aspx

And found it very complicated; compared to Virtual Box and VMWare ...

Maybe I'll find some time and do it.

greetings

Look in excellent tutorials section here how to use hyper-v. Far superior to others!

Tiburcio · 25 Nov 2016

cereberus said:

Look in excellent tutorials section here how to use hyper-v. Far superior to others!

Ok

I´ll take a look!

greetings

Dave M · 27 Nov 2016

I wanted to add, if you're using Hyper-V to run a late Windows based VM (8.1 / 2012 R2 and later) it's hard to beat considering it is included in the price of admission with Windows 8+ Professional and higher systems.

If you're going to run Linux or older Windows based systems, I prefer VMware Workstation, but it's fairly pricey. Virtualbox works well considering it's free.

They all have their ups and downs. If all you're looking for is a Windows sandbox to play around with, I'd stick with Hyper-V. It is a tad bit more complex than VMware Workstation and Virtualbox, about on par with an enterprise grade VMware solution (vCenter / ESXi / vSphere). The pedigree of Hyper-V comes from MS Server platforms though, so a bit of added complexity and functionality is to be expected. Once you get past the learning curve it's very good and brings a lot of features to the table!

Cliff S · 28 Nov 2016

Dave M said:

I wanted to add, if you're using Hyper-V to run a late Windows based VM (8.1 / 2012 R2 and later) it's hard to beat considering it is included in the price of admission with Windows 8+ Professional and higher systems.

If you're going to run Linux or older Windows based systems, I prefer VMware Workstation, but it's fairly pricey. Virtualbox works well considering it's free.

They all have their ups and downs. If all you're looking for is a Windows sandbox to play around with, I'd stick with Hyper-V. It is a tad bit more complex than VMware Workstation and Virtualbox, about on par with an enterprise grade VMware solution (vCenter / ESXi / vSphere). The pedigree of Hyper-V comes from MS Server platforms though, so a bit of added complexity and functionality is to be expected. Once you get past the learning curve it's very good and brings a lot of features to the table!

You can also use VMware Player for free, if you don't need any extras:
To Download:
free
or
Download VMware Player - MajorGeeks
And yes one thing I don't like about Hyper-V(the hypervisor I use) is not having sound when using Ubuntu, but that's ok, as I use Ubuntu, or any other Linux distro to browse the "unknown", and really do not want it to share with my host system anyhow, as in my case I want it truly sandboxed for use..

Windows OSs in Hyper-V are great testing playgrounds. If you think ahead and create an Export to an external disk in case you accidentally nuke your "key activated" virtual hard disk, which has your Unique ID, and then loose your Windows key, forever because you cannot run slmgr /upk anymore

. and then use checkpoints to recover if you really mess up, you can restore to the exact previous state where you made the checkpoint.

kado897 · 28 Nov 2016

Cliff S said:

You can also use VMware Player for free, if you don't need any extras:
To Download:
free
or
Download VMware Player - MajorGeeks
And yes one thing I don't like about Hyper-V(the hypervisor I use) is not having sound when using Ubuntu, but that's ok, as I use Ubuntu, or any other Linux distro to browse the "unknown", and really do not want it to share with my host system anyhow, as in my case I want it truly sandboxed for use..

Windows OSs in Hyper-V are great testing playgrounds. If you think ahead and create an Export to an external disk in case you accidentally nuke your "key activated" virtual hard disk, which has your Unique ID, and then loose your Windows key, forever because you cannot run slmgr /upk anymore

. and then use checkpoints to recover if you really mess up, you can restore to the exact previous state where you made the checkpoint.

You can also make snapshots with VirtualBox but not with VMWare Player so if you can't use Hyper-V I recommend VirtualBox.