In today’s tutorial I will be showing you how to run Windows XP on any Android device. Now I know that this is not exactly new news and its been done before but there has always been a major speed issue with running Windows on an Android device. A compact Android device was not really built to run duel operating systems and especially with one of them being a Windows XP system. In this tutorial I will be showing you though how to do a couple small modifications to boost the speed of the Windows XP emulation. Now before we begin I’d also like to point out that your Android will need to be rooted for this tutorial so if your Android is still not rooted then you should consider taking a few minutes to do so. So if your Android is rooted then we can get started setting up to run Windows XP on your Android. Now you will need a PC to do this as well. We are going to use a PC to install a copy of Windows XP on a blank image file which will basically be used as a virtual hard drive on your Android. First things first you will need to download all these from the links provided below. You will need to download Qemu Manager for your PC, the SDL package and Blank-Disk image package for the Boch app on your Android, Bock.apk for your Android, and if you don’t already have software to extract the packages either WinRAR or 7-Zip. Now you will also need a copy of Windows XP as I cannot link here due to copyright laws but if you don’t have a copy just find a torrent or a download somewhere online there is plenty of places you can find a copy. It will also need to be an ISO image file so if you have a disk ill link ISO Magic Maker for your PC which will easily make your CD into an ISO file. LINKS: Qemu Manager (PC) Boch.apk Blank_Disk.zip Bochs_SDL.zip ADDITIONAL LINKS (if needed): WinRAR 7-Zip ISO Magic Maker Once you have all these downloaded to your PC the first thing you will need to do is to install the Qemu Manager to your PC. Once you have Qemu Manager installed to your PC you will need to next extract the two packages to your computer, both the Blank_Disk.zip and the Bochs_SDL.zip packages need to be extracted. You can extract them where ever you want. If you don’t know how to do this then you will need to install either WinRAR or Z-Zip to your PC. I personally use WinRAR but once thats installed simply right click on the package you wish to extract and click extract package. Just as simple as that. Once you have the packages extracted Start the Qemu Manager on your PC. Once you have the Qemu Manager opened on your desktop then click the small plus sign in the top left of the screen. This is to add a new virtual machine which is basically like running a virtual computer inside your real computer. We will be using this to install the copy of XP to the blank disk image. So once you click the small plus sign a new window will appear for you to start setting up some of the specifics for your virtual machine. The first window will ask what you wish to name the machine. You can name it anything you want it doesn’t matter or make any difference. After you type the name for your virtual machine in the name section at the top of the window press the next button at the bottom right of the screen to go to the next set of settings. The next window will ask you how much RAM memory you wish to allocate to your new virtual machine. This is just for the speed of the setup process and will not affect the speed of Windows on your Android so you can just set it for around 1024 is a good amount for the setup process. Now if you want to you can use more RAM which will speed the process up but I would advise against going over half the total amount of available RAM on your PC. If you allocate to much RAM to the virtual machine for this set up process instead of speeding it up it will actually slow it down or make it crash even because the Windows or Mac or whatever type of PC your using for this set up process requires RAM as well and if you allocate most of the RAM for your PC to this virtual machine you won’t have the necessary RAM for your actual PC to run smoothly and efficiently which in turn will slow the setup process down instead of speed it up since the virtual machine is being run on your physical machine. Once you have allocated the amount of RAM you wish to use for your virtual machine you need to change the option right below it to “Do not use a virtual disk image”. We will be using the blank disk image we extracted earlier in its place to install the Windows operating system on. Once you have set the RAM and selected to not use a virtual disk image then press next. And the last of the settings can stay as defaulted and just press finish. Once the virtual machine is set up we will next need to change a few settings still on the specifics of the virtual machine. First we will need to set the blank disk image that we downloaded and extracted in the beginning of this tutorial as the virtual hard drive for this virtual machine so click the drives tab like shown below. After clicking the drives tab double click where it says “Hard disk O” this will make a window appear where you can specify the directory of the blank disk image you extracted earlier. Now when you press the little button with the three dots in it to browse for the blank disk image you will need to set the viewer to all file types at the bottom of the window where the bottom slide down option is. Ill show you this in the picture below. You will need to change it from “Disk Images” to “All Files”. After selecting the blank disk image as the virtual hard drive next you will need to change the virtual Disk drive so you can boot from the Windows XP ISO file. So double click where it says CD-ROM Drive and the same type of window will appear for you to locate the Windows XP ISO file. Once you have located and specified the XP ISO file then next we will change just one last thing. Click the Hardware tab at the top of the screen. In this tab you can change the number of CPUs you wish to use in the virtual machine. Again the more that you use the smoother the set up process will run and with this you don’t have to worry about going to high so set the highest number of CPUs that you are able to go. For my laptop I’m using it only has a dual core CPU so I can go as high as 2. For those that have quadcore CPUs they can go as high as 4. The more you use the smoother and faster the setup will run. Once you have all these settings set up then your ready to start the virtual box and run the Windows XP installation process. Just click the green “play button” at the top of the screen and the virtual machine will start. Now a window will show up that looks just like a PC if you were to put the Windows XP disk in the disk drive and boot from it and it works exactly the same way. You will need to press any key to boot from the disk when it starts. Then just run through the setup process installing Windows XP to the blank disk image you set up as the virtual hard drive. Now you will be asked about formatting and you can format it to anything you want. It wont make a difference if you format it to an NTFS or Fat32 filing system. Finish the set up process then you will be ready to start modifying the app so it will run a bit smoother and faster on your Android device. Once windows is setup on the virtual machine shut down the machine by pressing the little red “stop button” in the top of the window. Then close Qemu out we are done with that now. First locate the blank disk image file that you extracted and installed Windows onto. Rename it c thats it just a lower case c nothing else. After renaming it move it to the SDL folder that you extracted in the beginning of the tutorial from the SDL package you downloaded. Open the SDL folder. You will find a bochsrc.txt file. Click on it to open it in either Wordpad or Notepad it doesn’t matter. Once it is open you need to find where it says “c.img” in parenthesis just like that. You will need to delete the .img so its just “c” in parenthesis just like that. This will tell the boch application to boot the blank disk image that you installed Windows onto. This is why you needed to rename the file c. Once you edited the bochsrc file to boot from the “c” blank disk image that we install windows on then next we will do some minor modifications to help with the speed issue that Android users have always had while trying to run Windows XP on their devices. First at the top of the bochsrc text file you will see where it says how much memory is being used. This is referring to the amount of RAM that your Android will be allocating for just this virtual machine. Basically the same principles apply as when you set up Qemu on your PC. The more RAM you use the better the machine will run. Now granted if you use to much the Android firmware will not be able to run efficiently and may even crash and restart so I would use the same rule of thumb when setting this up as you did on the Qemu Manager. Don’t use more than half of the available RAM on your Android device for this virtual machine because thats when trouble usually starts. If you don’t know how much RAM it is that you have on your Android device simply go online and look up the specs for your Android. The next thing that we can change is again the number of CPUs. Nowadays Android devices are getting better and better. More RAM being used better CPUs even better GPUs or Graphics chips. Now some Androids even have quad core CPUs. So if thats you then you can change this number up to four on the bochsrc file. Im leaving mine at two because im doing this tutorial on an older S3 but two is just fine to. If you don’t know for sure about your CPU id advice you to leave that part alone then. Now After making all the adjustments to the bochsrc file save and exit. Then you will need to transfer the SDL folder and the boch.apk file over to your Android. Now it doesn’t matter if you place it in the internal storage or the SD card but you will need a minimum of 2 gbs of free space wherever you drop it because the image file alone is 1.5 gbs. Once you have it transferred to your Android then we will be going to the Android to finish the tutorial. First you will need “unknown sources” enabled in your device’s settings if they aren’t already enabled because the boch application we will be using is not from the Google Play Store itself and will need to be installed directly from the apk file I provided for you. If you don’t know where to find “unknown sources” simply go into the device’s settings and select the security settings. When your in the security settings if you scroll down you will find the “unknown sources” setting. Make sure there is a check in the box next to it showing that its enabled. After making sure that “unknown sources” is enabled go to your file manager for your Android device. Now if you don’t have a file manager you will definitely need one for this tutorial. You can download one for free off the Google Play Store. There are several that you can find on the Play Store but I will link my favorite one below called Astro File Manager. Once you have your file manager installed and ready open it and locate the Boch.apk file that you transfered to your Android from your PC. When you find it just press it to open it and install. If you get a dialogue box during the installation its because you didn’t have “unknown sources” enabled and you will probably have to go back enable that and then reinstall the application. Once Boch is installed just simply press open. Opening the BOCH application will automatically load the Windows XP operating system from the blank disk image that we set up with Qemu because the src text file that we edited will tell the BOCH application what to boot. Now give it some time depending on your Android device and the amount of memory that you allocated for the virtual machine it may take anywhere from five mins to an hour to load. You could have the best high end Android device there is but if you didn’t set up the src file like I showed you it will take about an hour to load all the way since it will be using the default 384 mbs of RAM. That much RAM will run XP but it will be incredibly slow. Once its booted thats it you can theoretically do anything on it that you would be able to on a windows pc all depending on the Android you have and the speed you are able to run it. I know for most people this will be super slow and you won’t be able to do much with it but it’s also a great way to brag to your Iphone friends and show them how Android is so much better than Iphone!! Well that concludes our Tutorial!! I hope you enjoyed this and if you have any comments feel free to leave them below or if you have any questions
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