With the computer's rapid increases in power and efficiency, computer virtualization has taken the scene by storm. With virtualization software, and powerful enough computer hardware, your computer can run a virtual computer within itself. This effectively gives you multiple OS's on the host OS. This can be used for a lot of cool stuff that your computer would normally be limited by. Let's take a look at a few.
You can:
- Run software from other platforms.
- Run multiple OS's at the same time.
- Chain VPNs.
- Use it for testing software in a sandbox.
- Sandbox a virus to study it.
- Many more
With all of these reasons, why wouldn't a person want a virtual machine? Sadly, the common solution on the Windows platform is to spend a few hundred dollars on VMware. However, thanks to the awesome people at Oracle, we have a FREE alternative, which is actually better and more stable in my opinion. It's called VirtualBox.
In this Null Byte, we are going to install VirtualBox and prepare a virtual drive and resources for a Windows virtual machine. Let's get to it.
Step 1 Download & Install VirtualBox
- Download VirtualBox.
- Navigate to the Downloads directory.
- Double-click the installer.
- Click through the Next > Next > Install GUI (only select and deselect options if you know what you are doing).
- Run it.
Step 2 Configure & Prepare VirtualBox for an OS Installation
Follow along with me here in this video tutorial for a quick and painless setup of a virtual drive in preparation to have an OS installed onto it.
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Image via Out of the Blue Solutions
