Free VM environments to install for customer?

[timeshifter]

Can anyone recommend a good, free VM program that I could put on a customer's PC?

Situation: long-time customer had a hard drive crash on his Windows 7 PC. The machine was very old and not worth fixing, so we bought a new one. It runs Windows 10.

I had a good image backup since I had installed Veeam Endpoint Backup FREE edition on his PC. I restored that image to a spare hard drive I had and got his machine up and running in my shop so I could get his new machine setup as close to what he had.

I thought it would be really cool to take that image and do a P2V and give him his new machine with his old machine in a VM. It would only be temporary, not his day to day. But might give some comfort that he could find things or do things the old way during the transition. Whether this is actually a good idea or not is certainly up for debate, and maybe not a good idea for this particular user or situation.

But, it would be cool. So, just for fun, what are some VM environments that I could use for this? Hyper-V, Virtual Box, any others.

 

[Porthos]

I use Hyper-V in 10 Pro. Remember you will still need a legal license for that win 7. It would violate the EULA to use the old one if OEM.

 

[SAFCasper]

My personal preference is Hyper-V.

The other main competitor to look into would be Vmware Player. The Unity feature is really nice when you just want the VM to run some old software.

 

[timeshifter]

I use Hyper-V in 10 Pro

As soon as I started typing my message I thought of Hyper-V. But I think you need Pro for that not Home, right?

Answer: right. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/virtualization/hyper-v-on-windows/reference/hyper-v-requirements

My personal preference is Hyper-V.

The other main competitor to look into would be Vmware Player. The Unity feature is really nice when you just want the VM to run some old software.

Didn't realize that VMware Player was still around. Haven't used that in a long time.

 

[Krynn72]

I've always used virtualbox for personal virtual machines. Never had a problem after initial set up with any of them.

 

[GTP]

+1 Virtualbox.

I have used Qemu on occasion, not feature rich, just works.

Latest build qemu-w64-setup-20170131