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I have an old computer (from 2012) with lots of RAM, which works fine. I bought it with a Windows 8 license, which has since been upgraded to Windows 10. In the last couple of years it went for too many infinite restart loops while updating Windows 10. It cost money to get Windows reinstalled.

After this last infinite restart loop, I decided to install Ubuntu 16.04, and on a brand new hard disk but in the same old machine. Now I would like to run VirtualBox and a Windows 10 virtual machine on this Ubuntu machine. How can I go about doing this?

I don't have the OS installation media separately.

Wings
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Jay Godse
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  • Install VirtualBox, create a new Virtual Machine, find your Windows 10 installation media, point the new VM to it, and off you go. This is simply how VirtualBox works. – Jos Jun 16 '18 at 15:03
  • @Jos You might consider posting this as an answer. It's probably the easiest way to go using the Virtualization from the default repository. – L. D. James Jun 16 '18 at 15:25
  • Procedures for Windows 10 are similar to Windows 7 see this guide here. You can get a Windows installation ISO from Microsoft and then should be able to install with your license. – Takkat Jun 16 '18 at 15:39
  • I don't have the Windows 10 installation media or even the Windows 8 installation media. That was 5 years ago, and it was preinstalled. – Jay Godse Jun 16 '18 at 15:40
  • You download the Windows 10 installation media from the Microsoft Store. Search for it. It's free for 30 days. After that, you need a license. – user535733 Jun 16 '18 at 15:48
  • @L.D.James I outlined the basic steps but others gave very useful additional tips. – Jos Jun 16 '18 at 16:28
  • @Jos I understand. The other answers came after your comment/answer. One as suggesting for the user to install something outside the repository, which might be a little complex for some users. The other just recently appeared an hour later. – L. D. James Jun 16 '18 at 16:35
  • just in case you want to update your windows inside that virtual machine in a faster way than microsofts standard update procedure, use the unofficial offline windows update installer - i use it every time when i do any kind of fresh windows installation to safe lots of time - http://download.wsusoffline.net/ – AlexOnLinux Jun 17 '18 at 02:36
  • Possible duplicate of How to install Ubuntu on VirtualBox? – karel Jun 22 '19 at 06:10

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I did the same this Monday using 'Oracle VM Virtualbox Manager'. Steps are pretty simple and all you have to do is:

  • Set the OS up --> select the OS (Windows in this case), allocate RAM and hard disk space (usually Virtualbox does it for you.)
  • Installation of OS--> then click on a green colour icon 'start' which will ask you to specify the location of .iso file. It will finish installing Windows as it happens in normal install.

PS: My machine is old and it takes a good portion of RAM to run Virtualbox. That makes it very slow. It becomes close to non-responsive when I try to open 10-15 tabs in Firefox (usual for my work). I use Windows set-up to read .doc/.ppt/.xls files in MS-Office due to compatibility issue of these files in Libreoffice. I have completely shifted to Ubuntu, otherwise.

Wings
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