With that said, as a quick-and-easy onboard option in Windows 10, it’s definitely worth a go. On the downside, it doesn’t virtualize any sound hardware, and (much like many VMs) isn’t great at virtualizing GPUs either. It’s not only robust but has a nice clean interface and is easy to use. Hyper-V has been around since 2008, replacing Microsoft Virtual PC as the native go-to option for virtualization in Windows 8 onwards.Īlong with allowing you to virtualize operating systems, Hyper-V goes quite a bit further, letting you virtualize hardware like hard drives, switches, external media drives and so on.

Note: Hyper-V is only compatible with Professional, Education and Enterprise versions of Windows and Windows Server.

You can run software that’s designed for older versions of Windows, for example, by running a virtual instance of that Windows version, then installing the software within that, or quickly testing software and functions in multiple operating systems.īut you probably know that already, so we’ll present our favorite free virtualization software for Windows 10.

Best free vm software for windows 10