Windows in a window
In our last article, we talked about installing Boot Camp in order to install Windows. Option number 2 is to install a Virtualisation software. If you remember, this is software that lets you run Windows inside a window on your Mac. There are a few different programs that we can use. Most you have to pay for, such as the excellent Parallels, or VMWare Fusion. But wonderfully, there are options which don’t cost any money at all. I am an absolute fan of Virtual Box. This is free and very easy to use. It might not be as fully featured as the others, but it does the job, and best of all, it’s very fast. Download a copy of Virtual Box and start it up.
Press on “New” in the top left corner.
Press “Next”
Give your Windows installation a name, as I have done here. Choose which version of Windows you are using by choosing your Operating System, and then choose the correct “Version”.
I normally click on “Next” here,
choose “Create new hard disk”
Click “Next”,
Now you get to choose how much of your hard drive you want Windows to take up. Here you can see I have chosen 8GB. Because in the previous screen we chose the option of a “Dynamically Expanding Storage”, this option here won’t take up 8GB of your hard disk, but will get bigger as it needs to up to 8GB.
Click on “Finish”
Again Click on “Finish”
You will get a summary screen like the one above. You should now click on the “Start” button (the picture of the green arrow).
You can click on “Next”.
At this screen, you are being asked where your Windows is, which 99.9% of the time will be a CD / DVD that you can slip into your Mac. Click on Next.
What follows will be a normal Windows installation, inside a window. Surprisingly, installing Windows on a Mac can be faster than installing it on a normal Windows PC. Once finished, you will have a working Windows. Whenever you need to start it, open up Virtual Box and start your Windows up. One other advantage of doing this is being able to shut down Virtual Box without having to shut down Windows. The next time you start it up, it will be exactly where you left it.
Virtual Box is free and very well made. But if you are needing more fancy / advanced features, it’s worth looking into VMWare Fusion of Parallels. Both do the same job as Virtual Box, but allow you to do a little more. VMWare and Parallels, allow you to run Windows programs in a “kiosk” mode. That means that only that program that you need will open up and run, and not the whole of Windows. This is great if you need to use one or two specific programs in Windows rather than needing to use Windows itself. But for everyday occasional Windows use, Virtual Box is great and free. You can’t get better than that.
