If you are the nostalgic type, then you most likely remember the days of running Windows XP on your home computer. Most people loved the performance and reliability that Windows XP had to offer and miss the simple interface and how it didn’t require high end hardware to run.
Watch Video: How to Install Windows XP as a Virtual Machine in VirtualBox.
Obviously, you are not going to install Windows XP on your main computer since it is not supported by Microsoft for security updates or any other type of updates. Plus, you may find that some of your hardware will not be supported and there will be no XP drivers available for it.
One way to run Windows XP on your computer is by configuring it as a virtual machine. Desktop virtualization is very common these days and you can use software such as Hyper-V, VMware Workstation, VMware Player and Oracle VirtualBox to create virtual machines running a variety of operating systems. In this article, we will be showing you how to install Windows XP as a virtual machine in VirtualBox.
In order to install Windows XP as a virtual machine in VirtualBox, you will need to install the VirtualBox software on your computer. VirtualBox is free to use and will run on Windows, Linux and macOS. You can download it from their website here. You will also need to download the Windows XP ISO image file from here.
Once you have VirtualBox installed, open the VirtualBox Manager and click on the New button. Here you will need to name your VM whatever you like and choose the path for the virtual machine files if you do not want to use the default folder. In the section that says ISO Image, browse to the location of the Windows XP ISO file that you downloaded. VirtualBox should detect that the OS is Windows XP and add that to the Version box. You should then check the box that says Skip Unattended Installation.
Next, you can assign how much memory and how many processors you want to allocate to your Windows XP virtual machine. You should be fine with 4GB or so and should not allocate too much in case your host computer does not have that much RAM installed. One processor should be fine as well.
For the hard disk, you can change it from the default 10GB to whatever size you like assuming you have the disk space on your host for this virtual hard drive. For the hard drive type and variant, you can use the default VDI (VirtualBox Disk Image). If you check the box for Pre-allocate Full Size, then VirtualBox will use the entire size of the virtual disk on your host hard drive rather than expand its size as needed within the guest OS.
Now that you have your Windows XP virtual machine configured, you can select it and then click on the Start button to start the VM and begin the Windows XP installation process.
When you get to the section where it asks for a license key, you can use the one below.
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Once you have Windows XP installed, you can then go to the Devices menu from the VM console and choose Insert Guest Additions CD Image to install the VirtualBox Guest Additions. This extra software is a suite of software and drivers installed inside a virtual machine to enhance its functionality with things such as mouse pointer integration between the host and VM, improved graphics performance, shared folders, time synchronization, drag and drop functionality and more.
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