How to set up a virtual machine on your mac

A virtual machine is essentially a new machine on your current one. A new environment (area(in memory)) which is separate to your current.

Why would one do this you ask?

Simplezz, to create a windows operating system on a mac computer. This would mean you no longer use an IOS environment but have what is basically a windows computer on your mac.

To set this up your computer will allocate processing power and memory away from your current operating system (what currently looks like your whole machine) and gives it to a new one (what looks like a windows machine).

Why did I do this?

My whole coding life I have been a mac user, however recently started coding in C#.

C# is a programming language written to operate on Microsoft’s .Net programming framework. This means to work on older* .Net programmes I need to use a Windows machine to run the code.

*.Net core now allows you to develop C# on a mac or linx.

1. Download VMFusion software

Download VMware Fusion here: http://mac.filehorse.com/download-vmware-fusion/7623/download/

(choose ‘skip this version’ on the upgrade prompt)

License number:

`XXXXXXXXX`

When the upload gets to this stage:

2. Download Microsoft ISO (64-bit)

Go to : https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/software-download/windows10ISO (64 bit one)

Select to download the ‘windows 10’ and language ‘English’ (or whichever language you like).

3. Putting the Windows operating system (Microsoft ISO) into your virtual machine

Drag and drop the download file icon:

Into the space for the ‘install from disc or image’:

Click ‘Continue’:

Chose ‘Windows 10 x64’ as the Operating System:

Click continue, then finish on the final page:

Save as follows:

4. Customising Settings of your Virtual machine

a) Customise hardware. Click on the ‘Hard Disk’ icon:

Check the size of mac storage:

In this example it is 500GB:

Allocate approximately half disk of your total storage space to VMware Fusion. In this example 200GB has been allocated:

Click the ‘advanced options’ dropdown.

Select both the ‘pre-allocate disk space’ and ‘split into multiple files’ options:

Click ‘Apply’.

VMware will then take some time to ‘Reconfigure the virtual disk’. This can take up to 15–20 mins.

Click the ‘Show All’ button at the top left of the window to go back to the main menu.

b) Customise Processors & memory. Click the ‘Processors & memory’ icon:

Change ‘Processors’ to 4 Processor Cores (as opposed to the default 1) and allocate around half of your total Ram capacity, so in this example, 8200MB:

Click the ‘Show All’ button at the top left of the window to go back to the main menu.

c) Sharing folders between your mac and this virtual computer. Click the ‘Sharing’ icon:

Tick ‘Enable shared folders’. Then tick the folders you want to mirror:

Back to ‘show all’ and your done with the customisation.

5. Installing Windows on your Virtual Machine

The black window with the play button is your virtual windows machine. Click the play icon and you should go through the following screens:

When the below appears click ‘Next’, then ‘Install Now’:

Select ‘I don’t have a product key’:

Click ‘Advanced custom setup’ then select the window’s operating system ‘Window 10 pro’:

Select ‘Next’, then ‘Custom Install Windows only’:

Then ‘next’:

This is the end of installing your windows virtual machine.

It should restart itself and then open. Go through the nromal windows setup selecting the correct country and language.

Thanks for reading.