To remedy that, click on the blue New button in the top left corner. When the installer is done, VirtualBox will start up, and you’ll see a message informing you that you don’t have any virtual machines created yet.

There’s a few choices you can make during the installation, but you can just leave the default options selected for everything and click through. If you’ve got all of the above, start by installing VirtualBox. Don’t worry-we’ll walk you through them, one at a time.Ĭlick the blue New button to get started. Setting up a virtual machine isn’t very complicated, but it does involve a number of steps. With a virtual machine, you can have a full-fledged Windows XP computer running in a window on your desktop, or even one running Linux or Windows 95. It borrows some of your host computers resources, like hard disk space and RAM and uses those to run the virtual computer. If you’re unfamiliar with the concept, a virtual machine is pretty much what it sounds like: a simulated computer that runs within your main operating system.

In light of all this, we recommend that you skip XP Mode in favor of a more flexible solution for accessing Windows XP-running the operating system in a virtual machine. It’s not entirely clear what the security ramifications of running XP Mode after support is cut off are, or if Microsoft will continue to host the free download that allows you to use XP mode. (Click to enlarge.)įinally, and perhaps most importantly, Microsoft will be ending support for XP Mode on April 8 th, the same day they end support for XP itself.

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