Virtual PC is a discontinued

x86 x86 (also known as 80x86 or the 8086 family) is a family of complex instruction set computer (CISC) instruction set architectures initially developed by Intel, based on the 8086 microprocessor and its 8-bit-external-bus variant, the 8088. Th ...

emulator In computing, an emulator is Computer hardware, hardware or software that enables one computer system (called the ''host'') to behave like another computer system (called the ''guest''). An emulator typically enables the host system to run sof ...

software for

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

hosts and

PowerPC PowerPC (with the backronym Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC – Performance Computing, sometimes abbreviated as PPC) is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) created by the 1991 Apple Inc., App ...

-based

Mac Mac or MAC may refer to: Common meanings * Mac (computer), a line of personal computers made by Apple Inc. * Mackintosh, a raincoat made of rubberized cloth * Mac, a prefix to surnames derived from Gaelic languages * McIntosh (apple), a Canadi ...

hosts. It was created by

Connectix Connectix Corporation was a software and hardware company that released innovative products that were either made obsolete as Apple Computer incorporated the ideas into system software, or were sold to other companies once they became popular. It ...

in 1997 and acquired by

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

in 2003, after which the program was renamed Microsoft Virtual PC. In July 2006, Microsoft released the Windows version free of charge. The Mac version was discontinued following the transition to Intel processors that same year. In 2009, Microsoft released Windows Virtual PC, which is only compatible with

Windows 7 Windows 7 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became generally available on October 22, ...

hosts, and is the technical foundation for the latter's Windows XP Mode. Windows Virtual PC does not officially support MS-DOS or operating systems older than Windows XP Professional SP3 as guests. Virtual PC was discontinued in 2011 in favour of

Hyper-V Hyper-V is a native hypervisor developed by Microsoft; it can create virtual machines on x86-64 systems running Windows. It is included in Pro and Enterprise editions of Windows (since Windows 8) as an optional feature to be manually enabled. A ...

History and versions

Connectix Virtual PC, Microsoft Virtual PC 2004, Microsoft Virtual PC 2007, and Windows Virtual PC are successive versions of the same software. Versions of Virtual PC by Microsoft runs on several versions of Windows, beginning with Windows 2000 in Virtual PC 2004 and later Windows XP in Virtual PC 2007 onwards. These older versions were still available and support operating systems older than Windows XP. Windows Virtual PC only runs on Windows 7 and only supports versions of Windows beginning with Windows XP. Starting in Windows 8, Microsoft replaced Virtual PC with

Virtual PC by Connectix

Virtual PC was originally developed as a Macintosh application for System 7.5 and released by Connectix in June 1997. The first version of Virtual PC designed for Windows-based systems, version 4.0, was released in June 2001. Virtual PC 4 was the first version with expandable drive images. Connectix sold versions of Virtual PC bundled with a variety of guest operating systems, including Windows,

OS/2 OS/2 is a Proprietary software, proprietary computer operating system for x86 and PowerPC based personal computers. It was created and initially developed jointly by IBM and Microsoft, under the leadership of IBM software designer Ed Iacobucci, ...

, and

Red Hat Linux Red Hat Linux was a widely used commercial open-source Linux distribution created by Red Hat until its discontinuation in 2004. Early releases of Red Hat Linux were called Red Hat Commercial Linux. Red Hat published the first non-beta release ...

. As virtualization's importance to enterprise users became clear, Microsoft took interest in the sector and acquired Virtual PC and Virtual Server (unreleased at the time) from Connectix in February 2003. Under agreement with Connectix, Innotek GmbH (makers of

VirtualBox Oracle VirtualBox (formerly Sun VirtualBox, Sun xVM VirtualBox and InnoTek VirtualBox) is a hosted hypervisor for x86 virtualization developed by Oracle Corporation. VirtualBox was originally created by InnoTek Systemberatung GmbH, which was ac ...

, now part of

Oracle An oracle is a person or thing considered to provide insight, wise counsel or prophetic predictions, most notably including precognition of the future, inspired by deities. If done through occultic means, it is a form of divination. Descript ...

) ported version 5.0 to run on an OS/2 host.Innotek/Connectix Virtual PC
/ref> This version also included guest extensions (VM additions) for OS/2 guests, which could run on Windows, OS/2 or Mac OS X hosts using Virtual PC versions 5, 6 or 7. A new version of the guest extensions was later included with Microsoft's Virtual PC 2004.

Microsoft Virtual PC

On July 12, 2006, Microsoft released Virtual PC 2004 SP1 for Windows free of charge, however the Mac version remained a paid software. The equivalent version for Mac, version 7, was the final version of Virtual PC for Mac. It ran on

Mac OS X macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

10.2.8 or later for

and was a

proprietary {{Short pages monitor *
''Virtual PC Guy'' blog
on

MSDN Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) was the division of Microsoft responsible for managing the firm's relationship with developers and testers, such as hardware developers interested in the operating system (OS), and software developers developing ...

Windows XP Mode
TechNet {{Virtualization software 1997 software 2009 software Classic Mac OS emulation software Freeware MacOS emulation software Microsoft software Virtualization software Windows 7 X86 emulators