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PowerPCFan

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Mar 5, 2022
308
106
I want to run Windows XP in a virtual machine on my iMac (late 2015 21.5” iMac) but I don’t know what VM to use. I would run it natively but I don’t have an old pc that can run XP. Please don’t reply “use boot camp,” I know that might work but I can’t do that, I just want to run XP inside of macOS. I need it for a YT video, if you are wondering :)

Have a great day,
-PowerPCFan
@PowerPCFan on MacRumors and TinkerDifferent
charlies.retro.computing@gmail.com

(I did not copy paste this signature, I wrote it on my iPad from scratch, lol 😂)
 
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Best to try the free version od VMware. They call it "Fusion" and it runs well and is easy to install. You will need an ISO file containing an install disk for Windows XP. Given that you have this ISO file getting it running is easy.

VirtualBox is also free and works well. It is targeted to more experienced uses. I use it on a 2011 vintage Mac Mini to run a small server.

Parallels can work but I'd not want to pay for it unless it did someone the others did not do. For your use case (yu are new to this and running XP) VMware's Fusion will be easy and have zero cost.
 
Best to try the free version od VMware. They call it "Fusion" and it runs well and is easy to install. You will need an ISO file containing an install disk for Windows XP. Given that you have this ISO file getting it running is easy.

VirtualBox is also free and works well. It is targeted to more experienced uses. I use it on a 2011 vintage Mac Mini to run a small server.

Parallels can work but I'd not want to pay for it unless it did someone the others did not do. For your use case (yu are new to this and running XP) VMware's Fusion will be easy and have zero cost.
Thanks. Can you provide a download link for Fusion? I recently downloaded Windows 95 from archive.org, so I’m sure I can find an XP ISO file. I am unable to access a computer for the next few days but I should be able to try this method this weekend.

-PowerPCFan
 
Thanks!

Edit: it feels like yesterday that I joined the forum, and now I just became a macrumors 6502!
 
I want to run Windows XP in a virtual machine on my iMac (late 2015 21.5” iMac) but I don’t know what VM to use. I would run it natively but I don’t have an old pc that can run XP. Please don’t reply “use boot camp,” I know that might work but I can’t do that, I just want to run XP inside of macOS. I need it for a YT video, if you are wondering :)

Have a great day,
-PowerPCFan
@PowerPCFan on MacRumors and TinkerDifferent
charlies.retro.computing@gmail.com

(I did not copy paste this signature, I wrote it on my iPad from scratch, lol 😂)
Your my kind of dude...running XP on an iMac ....Is it for your Mom ?
 
The last time I installed XP in a VM, I just used Virtualbox. It worked quite well, I don't think it had graphics acceleration but I really did not notice. XP is such a lightweight OS that it will run quite well on just about anything these days.

Someone else suggested VMware, and that's a good suggestion also. I use VMWare for Windows 11 VMs on my Mac, definitely is a good option for Windows in general (though I never used it for XP). The only downside to VMWare is that you have to jump through more hoops to download it (they ask for quite a lot of personal info when you create your account to get the free license).
 
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