After clicking OK on any dialog boxes that pop up-be sure to read them!-you’ll quickly notice that you can’t use your mouse during installation. The process is a bit trickier than your standard Windows installation.Ĭlick the name of your Android-x86 VM in VirtualBox’s left pane, and then click the big green Start arrow. Got it? Great! Now you’re ready to install Android on your PC. If you leave it on the default Soundblaster 16 setting, your Android VM’s audio won’t work properly. Click the Audio option, and in the window that appears, click the drop-down ‘Audio controller’ box and select ICH AC97. Simply browse your hard drive and select the Android-x86 ISO to load it in the virtual machine, and then click OK when you’re done.

There, click the disc icon to the right of ‘CD/DVD Drive’ and select Choose a virtual CD/DVD disk file from the drop-down menu that appears. Click the Storage button in the VM manager and, in the window that appears, select the Empty option underneath ‘Controller: IDE’ to bring up various ‘Attributes’ options to the right. Next, you need to point the VM at your Android-x86 ISO. (Remember: Android was made for phones, so it doesn’t take much space, even with multiple apps installed.)īoom! The VM appears in the VirtualBox manager. From there, you’ll want to pick up from the “Install Android on your PC” segment below.Ĭreate a virtual hard drive using the default options, adding more storage if you wish. If you want to dual-boot Android regardless, the steps for doing so are basically the same as dual-booting Windows 8, at least up until the point of actually installing Android. (Trust me-I tried it on three different machines.) Even so, running Android in a virtual machine is more consistently headache-free than dual-booting it. Hardware support for the operating system can be hit-and-miss, though the Android-x86 project mitigates that somewhat by providing several ISO files built around specific hardware, such as Asus and Lenovo ThinkPad laptops. And yes, you can install Android on your computer’s hard drive-but I don’t recommend even dual-booting this particular OS. How does Google’s mobile-focused operating system stack up on a full-size, not-so-mobile computer? You’ll know firsthand after giving Android a test drive in a virtual machine.Īdmittedly, virtual machines aren’t as peppy as physical ones unless you have a bunch of system resources to toss around.

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