
Free Windows XP-10 VirtualBox/Parallels Images from Microsoft - jlturner
https://dev.windows.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/tools/vms
======
taspeotis
Microsoft have been offering virtual machines for years now [1].

I know they offered Virtual PC and VirtualBox previously, is the news that
Parallels is now supported?

[1] [http://superuser.com/q/109944/23461](http://superuser.com/q/109944/23461)

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jagtesh
Nope. They've offered Parallels for years too.

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Cuuugi
I mean, I don't know when they released windows 10 VM's, that might be new.

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jagtesh
Not that either (proof:
[https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2015/08/17/windows-10-vi...](https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2015/08/17/windows-10-virtual-
machines-now-available-on-microsoft-edge-dev/))

Let's face it, this was a click bait (esp the free bit) and we all fell for
it.

~~~
Piskvorrr
Well, it is "free as in beer", with some strings attached (90-day usage limit,
no production use); still very useful for testing (this used to be at
modern.ie, apparently moved to a new address).

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rbanffy
Modern.ie redirects to this, not sure since when.

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ac29
Correction: free limited Windows VM images for testing Microsoft browsers.

You can't just throw these on a copy of your favorite virtualization platform
and have a free copy of Windows to legally do whatever you'd like with,
indefinitely.

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godzillabrennus
Indeed. Better off using [http://browserling.com](http://browserling.com) to
test.

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singham
BrowserStack.Com is much better

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ngrilly
Why do you feel it is better?

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EugeneOZ
Maybe because of much bigger latency which makes debugging animations so sexy
(almost impossible).

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ngrilly
I remember having been hit by this issue in the past (I'm in Europe too). It
made me use a local virtual machine instead with VirtualBox.

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donatj
I've used these for years in Web Development, they're invaluable.

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trm42
So the main point seems to be MS has killed modern.ie -site and redirect to
this dev.windows.com site. Still useful once in a while although the big disk
images are PITA to download and setup. I have better uses for my laptop SSD
than to fill it with different IEs and Windowses :p

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hexsprite
I use a service like browserstack instead for the occasions I need to test on
IE

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pmontra
Can you use it to test sites on localhost, maybe through a ssh tunnel?

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tracker1
There are tools for this.. iirc BrowserStack is a service on top of Selenium
WebDriver, and there's tooling for it in the node ecosystem. IIRC, there's
decent Ruby tooling, but I prefer to do all my browser related things in JS.

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bigiain
I know I'm old, but a 5Gig download just to run Edge on OS X? (And that's a
5Gug zipfile, I wonder how much of my SSD that's gonna eat unzipped?)

In the plus side, Chrome says "6 minutes left", and I've only just clicked
download. I suspect my network bandwidth improvements over the years make this
no less an imposition than the outrageous 200+Kb download for Doom over a
14.4k modem...)

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skrebbel
Oh poor you. If I want to test my app on OSX safari I have to either buy a mac
or find a hipster.

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imron
No you don't.

[http://www.macincloud.com](http://www.macincloud.com) works very well, and
they have billing by the hour and versions of OS X ranging from Lion through
to El Capitan.

No connection with them, just a satisfied customer.

~~~
rms_returns
A much cheaper way is to get it tested from freelancers on Upwork/Elance who
have OSX!

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MichaelApproved
Sometimes you need to see the issue first hand.

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danielrm26
What's the licensing situation for these VMs?

What can I use them for, for how long, and what limitations are in place?

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rms_returns
Even if the licensing terms were liberal, are you going to use an OS that
hasn't been issued system updates since ages? It will be riddled with malware
the moment you connect to the Internet!

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PietdeVries
I would almost say "challenge accepted" \- this calls for a little test!

I don't believe that the images that Microsoft made available are so
vulnerable as-they-are that they will be infected within hours...

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tdicola
You must not remember some of the more memorable worms like blaster. It was a
complete nightmare and would own machines that weren't behind a firewall in
minutes. Luckily long since patched, but it's only a matter of time for
others.

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PietdeVries
True - those were the days...

However, I believe these OS-es come with certain presets that will not expose
them to the wild-internet immediately. I assume (yes - assume) that MS has
enabled the firewalls per default on these images, so unless you use them to
browse to certain "entertainment sites" you should be quite ok...

Edit: ok, ran a lab-test (so not the real thing): Windows XP with IE6 on one
VM, Kali with Armitage on the other. A "Hail Mary" of 22 exploits did not
result in any session on the windows machine...

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orionblastar
90 day limited demo version of Windows. Make sure you back up the original
image in case your demo expires and you need to restore the image from the
original.

I remember Microsoft used to offer ISOS of Windows with a 90 day limited trial
key. There was a utility that would reset the demo clock as well as a command
line option to reset it for another 90 days.

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trentmb
Can I register a valid XP key with it?

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orionblastar
I don't see why not, as long as the license for that key matches the OS.

A friend of mine used to buy COA stickers from eBay that had XP keys on them
for like $10 each. They are OEM keys so he used an OEM XP CD-ROM to install
them with the keys on used systems. They would activate even if they have been
used before. If activations run out you can call Microsoft and have them
reset.

Windows 10 Keys are different, locked to the hardware. Windows XP keys can be
transferred to a different system.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
Just because you :can: do this doesn't mean it isn't a violation of the
software license.

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8draco8
On a OSX/Linux I was always using
[https://github.com/xdissent/ievms](https://github.com/xdissent/ievms) to get
Windows VM that I want.

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rossy
It's probably not the intended use case, but I use these more often for
testing desktop applications than for testing web pages. It's a shame there's
no 64-bit VMs.

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TorKlingberg
There is no IE11 on Windows 10 VM. It seems Microsoft are very committed to
Edge. Or is this to avoid misuse of the testing VMs?

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jayflux
It wouldn't make sense as most users would never use ie 11 on Windows 10. It's
possible, but it's hidden in the menu. Just get an Edge for Windows 10 VM and
use the IE 11 on that, it should be there.

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brian-armstrong
I used the Edge image to test Web Audio in Edge and it was perfect. I was able
to test my entire web app.

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ubanholzer
if you want to use it with Vagrant: [https://github.com/whatwedo/vagrant-
ievms](https://github.com/whatwedo/vagrant-ievms)

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ck2
Can the vmware converter make these work?

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michaelbuddy
are these still time limited? Because I'd rather have the desktop with feature
limits than time limits. Having to reinstall the VM because of a 30-day limit
is just a waste of time.

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mozumder
These don't "auto-update" to the latest Edge browser, do they?

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Sanddancer
That would defeat the purpose of them having a large range of images
available. These images are made so you can spin them up, test the site with a
range of IE/Windows combos, and then spin things down again.

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chris_wot
Ah, hopefully one day the ReactOS project will be sufficient and not require
these dodgy VMs.

In particular, I'd love to install ReactOS and build LibreOffice, er,
natively.

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cobalt
why are they dodgy?

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taneq
If these VMs use the same license as the ISOs, then they're under a 90-day
evaluation license which disallows commercial usage. Maybe this is what he's
referring to?

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chris_wot
Pretty much nailed it in one :-)

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wyuenho
At some point someone is going to have ask the questions: Who is gaming HN,
why is this news and at the top spot of HackerNews? MS has been offering this
for years and yet every once in a while I see posts similar to this on the
front page.

~~~
minitech
Surprisingly, not everyone is aware of everything that has ever been on the
front page of HN.

