How to run Google’s Android OS on a Windows PC

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	TOP STORY How to run Google’s Android OS on a Windows PC
	By Fred Langa Little-known fact: By using a virtual PC, you can set up and run a free, fully legitimate copy of Google’s Android on a standard Windows system. This gives you a way to safely experiment with the Android operating system — or to re-create the layout of an Android device you already have.

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The full text of this column is posted at windowssecrets.com/top-story/how-to-run-googles-android-os-on-a-windows-pc (paid content, opens in a new window/tab).

Columnists typically cannot reply to comments here, but do incorporate the best tips into future columns.[/td]

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Why make people go to all that bother. Just install bluestacks. So much easier. Nuts Fred.

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Why make people go to all that bother. Just install bluestacks. So much easier. Nuts Fred.

I was going to say the same thing. Bluestacks runs inside windows – so you get a cleaner UI integration and simple installation without needing to install a virtualisation platform like VirtualBox or follow the complicated technicalities described in this column.

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Why make people go to all that bother. Just install bluestacks. So much easier. Nuts Fred.

I agree, easy to use Bluestacks. Only downside I found is the s/w loads new apps on its own (usually games) to tempt a trial use…just delete them. Also any anti-virus tries to check the C:/ drive and takes forever, so of little value to test for bad downloads and install checks for virus or malware….but none so far has tried to get to windows or C: drive.

Easier sometimes to try apps on PC, but often just as easy to use my android phone.

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Having the same problem as in message 16 & 23. When I perform step 12 the computer goes through the steps but never gets to Step 13: When the Choose Partition. Hangs up on kernel panic message and just keeps repeating. I have a Dell Vostro with 8gb of memory and 100gb of disk space. I’ve deleted everything and d/l the files again with same result. Can’t find anything on the help site.

Thanks

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I should note that I also had the same trouble getting Firefox to download the Android image; it was stuck in a loop, asking me to enter the validation code. Switched to another browser and all was well.

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I certainly hope that someone replies to the problem as stated on #25. I have exactly the same problem.

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Excellent instructions Fred – thank you.

I did run into a issue with the VT-x setting that I suspect others may encounter as well. I’m running VirtualBox 4.3.8 on Windows 8.1 Pro-x64 on an Asus Z87-C board. The cpu is a Core i5 4440 and while Cpu-Z reports it as having VT-x capability, the VM’s System > Acceleration tab is greyed out. I normally run Vbox as a Standard user, so I thought that might be a problem, but when I created a similar VM logged in as an Administrator, I got the same result. This was disappointing as the hardware is only several months old.

Undeterred, I repeated the exercise on a much older machine running Windows 7 Pro-x64 on a Core2Duo E8400 also logged in as a Standard user. This time the Acceleration tab was not greyed out and I was able to install successfully. However, when I migrated this VM back to the first machine, it failed to boot, reporting
…EIP: [] intel_idle+0x7c/0x9b SS:ESP 0068:c165ff98…
and then going into a reboot loop.

I checked in the first machine’s UEFI BIOS but the only virtualization setting l could see was for VT-d, not VT-x.

Somewhere it was suggested to try vboxmanage modifyvm name –longmode on, but this command failed to complete.

I’d be interested to see if anyone else encounters this problem. A solution, or at least an explanation would also be welcome.

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Wow, and in only 25 steps that could go wrong. Trouble is I remember installing an update on NOVELL using 41 – 5 1/4 inch disks on Saturday morning. Sorry, Fred.

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This is fine as far as it goes, but for programmers, you can install Eclipse with the Android SDK and not only run applications, but develop them as well.

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Ditto on Bluestacks, Fred. I discovered it two years ago when I wanted a way to access the Google Play Store so that I could side-load apps onto my original Kindle Fire. I didn’t have a cell phone or other Android device–just my PC. BlueStacks works great. I wrote a how-to article about it at http://eweforia.wordpress.com/category/how-to/

It takes only four steps to get BlueStacks installed. The rest of the steps explain how to back up and copy the apps to DropBox and then install them on the Kindle.

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Hi Fred,
Great instructions! I didn’t see any mention of UEFI. Will these instructions work on a UEFI equipped computer?
Thanks for all your past articles. I’ve been bailed out often because of them.
Rich Baierschmidt

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Haven’t used BlueStacks as an earlier comment mentioned but I definitely prefer using Geny Motion: http://www.genymotion.com/

Still uses VMware as a base but give you lots of prepackaged options for specific device emulation and way easier to setup and configure.

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Well, I’m stumped. I downloaded the Intel tool and it says I do have Virtualization Technology, yet the System – Acceleration tab in Figure 4 is grayed out. I don’t understand why this is so. I have an Intel i7-3770 processor in a Dell XPS system running Windows 8.1. Can anyone help? Thank you.

I have the same problem with my Acer laptop. So, two newer computers, neither of which can do what you describe.

PS. I did install BlueStacks, but it would not run the game called Chip Chain well and that is what I wanted it for. So I went out and bought a Nexus 7 and can now use this as my true Android device. I use basic4Android as my Android development system. Eclipse would also work, I suppose, but it seems a lot more complicated than b4A.

Fred, what I really need is a way to run PHP code on my Android, including the ability to access .jar files and run them with PHP.

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A lot of motherboards support virtualization but have have some features of it disabled in the BIOS by default. I’d look through your BIOS and see if there’s anything relating to Virtualization, VT-D or VT-X that’s currently disabled and enable it. That might fix up the greyed out Acceleration tab for you.

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I’m already using VirtualBox for other OS’s so this option is good. I tried Android there awhile back but the emulation available then was lame. Thanks for the update, Fred.

Just a note – I ran into a couple of odd problems in Firefox. First the Android site Downloads page just displayed code. Then I found the download link by another route, but Google threw up an “unusual traffic” captcha that kept repeating. (probably because it was an iso file) When I copied the URL to Chrome, it threw up the Captcha but then allowed the download.

Curiously, the captcha wasn’t a safety warning but a suggestion I might be breaching terms of service. Given that I was not linking to or from a Google site, how was a breaking their terms of service??

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“Just a note – I ran into a couple of odd problems in Firefox. First the Android site Downloads page just displayed code. Then I found the download link by another route, but Google threw up an “unusual traffic” captcha that kept repeating. (probably because it was an iso file) When I copied the URL to Chrome, it threw up the Captcha but then allowed the download. ”

Thanks, DavidFB, for posting a solution to the “unusual traffic” nonsense. I got the Captcha to work by using IE instead of Firefox. I don’t know why Google keeps throwiing up these obstacles that are pure and utter nonsense.

I had a similar obstacle last month on several of my Feeburner feed sites: “We’re sorry… but your computer or network may be sending automated queries. To protect our users, we can’t process your request right now.” I filled out a support form, and got the reassuring answer: “Thanks for contacting us. We’ll follow up with you only if we need more information or have additional information to share.” Of course, I never heard from them again, and the problem still exists on three of my blogs.

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”Just a note – I ran into a couple of odd problems in Firefox. First the Android site Downloads page just displayed code. Then I found the download link by another route, but Google threw up an “unusual traffic” captcha that kept repeating. (probably because it was an iso file) When I copied the URL to Chrome, it threw up the Captcha but then allowed the download. ”

Thanks, DavidFB, for posting a solution to the “unusual traffic” nonsense. I got the Captcha to work by using IE instead of Firefox. I don’t know why Google keeps throwiing up these obstacles that are pure and utter nonsense.

I had a similar obstacle last month on several of my Feeburner feed sites: “We’re sorry… but your computer or network may be sending automated queries. To protect our users, we can’t process your request right now.” I filled out a support form, and got the reassuring answer: “Thanks for contacting us. We’ll follow up with you only if we need more information or have additional information to share.” Of course, I never heard from them again, and the problem still exists on three of my blogs.

Firefox is not developed or released by Google. The Mozilla Foundation is independent of Google. They do get a lot of funding from Google, but Firefox is not owned by Google.

Google itself does not play favorites between Chrome and IE in my experience. But certain types of Google plugins and Apps will not work under Firefox for reasons beyond Google’s control.

Among the three browsers, Firefox is the only one which uses the Netscape API for plugins and Apps (NPAPI). This is probably one source of the different responses to downloading certain Google Play Apps through Firefox. If so, this is not playing favorites. Google simply develops to one API while Firefox uses another API. And the two APIs are not compatible. Kinda like when users of RT tablets were complaining that they couldn’t install x86 programs on the Desktop. Different APIs.

-- rc primak

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Thanks Fred that was fun, one thing you might tell folks is how to get the screen to rotate when you install an app that wants to run side ways..lol fun playing at any rate.

Now I think I’ll try bluestacks since the other posters on here seem to like it.

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Thanks for the instructions, Fred. There was a couple of points where the choice was not obvious, so this helped.
I checked a couple of utilities to confirm I had VT-x and both said yes, but the tab was greyed out in VB. It was indeed turned off in the BIOS.

When I browsed online, I noticed some people had a conflict with Microsoft VM’s as Hyper-V may take over VT-x. In that case, it’s on in the BIOS but still unavailable in VB.
In Win7+, managing Hyper-V is a little obscure as the setting is hidden. I ran into this command line for turning it off and on (5th comment):
https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=41258

If you want to get fancier, I noticed this article on Hyper-V Manager:
http://www.altaro.com/hyper-v/hyper-v-manager-everything-you-need-to-know/
(still requires a reboot though)

This was not an issue for me but could come up if you use XP Mode or or other MS virtualization.

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Open Source Android is coming out with a 64-bit version (made for use on Bay Trail Atom Processors, with support promised by the ARM group). It is described here:

http://phandroid.com/2013/11/06/arm-64bit-processor-support-android-open-source-project/

Project x64 for Android will be part of the push by Google and Microsoft to bring Android up to full 64-bit status. This means more robust Apps and more powerful graphics, among other things. It also means that a Virtual Machine may no longer be the only way to enjoy Windows 8 and Android on the same device. Desktop Android is not likely to succeed, as Linux is already desktop-friendly and 64-bit capable.

Microsoft will probably not make its 64-bit Android available as a free download. (Hence, the Virtual Android described in the article probably will not work with Windows 8 Secure Boot active.) But there is a download available for the open-source 64-bit prototype Android, in case anyone’s intertested in going yet one step further than the 32-bit Android VM is capable of going.

Be aware that, beyond hardware limitations, Google has restricted a significant amount of the content of its Google Play App Store so that only certified devices can access those Apps. So don’t expect to have the whole Google Play or Amazon or any other App Store fully at your virtual fingertips by using the Open Source VM versions of Android. There really is no such thing as a free lunch.

I also agree that BlueStacks is much simpler to set up, as is Geny Motion.

-- rc primak

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I wish this topic came out a few weeks ago, since I had already installed Oracle VM Virtual Box and started playing around with the Android older release.
Unfortunately, I had a heck of a time. It turned out that I had the “Auto Capture Keyboard” option turned on and also had the “Mouse Integration” enabled. Not knowing that the right Ctrl key was the ‘host’ key, I was having much difficulty navigating. In frustration, I had given up. But now that I understand that whole “host” thingy, things are going smoother with Android for me.
KitKat (Android V4.4) has not been ported yet and that is the one I really wanted to try out originally.
I may just have to experiment with Bluestack, in the mean time.

Has anyone been able to make GoogleNow respond, in any Virtual machine environment??
But now that I am hearing that Cortana will be coming to the WindowsPhone in the near future, I may not need to use an Android phone and stay true to my own religion! :^_^:

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Bluestacks is for running specific Android apps on a PC. If you just want to run a specific game, that may be a better choice. But if you want to explore or experiment with the Android OS as Fred outlined, then you need OS virtualization like VirtualBox.

Bluestacks is also only free while in Beta, per their web site.

Genymotion presents as a testing environment for developers. It allows you to emulate various OS versions, screen sizes, etc. Easy to set up perhaps but more complex than necessary for playing a game on your PC. And again, its about app testing, not Android testing.

So basically, it depends on what you need.

I can also note that some VB’s come in OVA format with the settings pre-set. Just double click the OVA file and it loads into VB, ready to go. VB has Ubuntu 13.04 in this format, for example. Much fewer than 4 clicks and it has LibreOffice and other software pre-loaded too.

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I always enjoy the column, but I have a 6 month old AMD computer with Windows 8 on it, and my installation fails after I choose to Install Android x-86 to Hard Drive. It just reboots over and over to the same screen. I can’t get to the partition selection screen! I’m about to give up on the VM.

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I always enjoy the column, but I have a 6 month old AMD computer with Windows 8 on it, and my installation fails after I choose to Install Android x-86 to Hard Drive. It just reboots over and over to the same screen. I can’t get to the partition selection screen! I’m about to give up on the VM.

You need to determine if your issue might be related to Windows 8 Secure Boot. These symptoms are consistent with Secure Boot blocking the Android OS or Android virtual machine from being booted.

This behavior is one reason folks are NOT recommending dual-booting Android with Windows. Other problems may come up when trying to dual-boot Android and Linux on a PC. Some tablets, however, can dual-boot Android and Linux.

-- rc primak

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You need to determine if your issue might be related to Windows 8 Secure Boot. These symptoms are consistent with Secure Boot blocking the Android OS or Android virtual machine from being booted.

This behavior is one reason folks are NOT recommending dual-booting Android with Windows. Other problems may come up when trying to dual-boot Android and Linux on a PC. Some tablets, however, can dual-boot Android and Linux.

Thanks for your help, but I checked, and SecureBoot is not implemented on my machine, according to the PowerShell query. I realized that I also mis-stated; I’ve got 8.1 running.

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I just wanted to add that you can wake up your virtual Android device if it goes to sleep/turns off the display. In Vbox at least, the keyboard shortcut is Host+h (host is usually the right ctrl button). This is the same as clicking on Machine ->ACPI Shutdown. This is like tapping the power button, and will wake the device up if it is asleep.

Now if I could just get the weird clicks and sounds to go away.

For the folks complaining about how hard this is, how many steps there are, and how much easier this or that alternative is. This procedure is not all that different from setting up any VM. It takes maybe 5 mins to do and when you’re done you have a working Android device, or Linux computer, or whatever. If this isn’t of interest or valuable to *you* or *you* see no difference between running apps vs running a device, that’s fine. But why rag on Fred? This will be of interest or valuable to someone. And I think Fred did a bang up job of outlining the process so even someone who has never setup or used a VM, will be able to follow along.

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I always enjoy the column, but I have a 6 month old AMD computer with Windows 8 on it, and my installation fails after I choose to Install Android x-86 to Hard Drive. It just reboots over and over to the same screen. I can’t get to the partition selection screen! I’m about to give up on the VM.

I have the same problem. I am running win7 64bit with virtualbox 4.3.8 and iso 4.4-rc1. 4.3 as stated in the article I can’t get to download.

The last command on the screen is Kernal panic – not syncing: Attempted to kill init! exitcode=0x0000000b

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I’m seeing the same thing; running VirtualBox on a Mac, not an Windows machine, but everything was the same for setup. The ISO will not boot properly; something is crashing

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Very informative, Fred. Steve Gibson, Gibson Research, has a small program, securable.exe, that can quivkly determine if a computer and processor is virtualization capable. http://www.grc.com/securable.htm

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I have the same problem as many above, namely it fails to reach the ‘Choose Partition’ point but stops at the following display.

36525-17-03-2014-15-39-41

It does say automatic keyboard capture on, but I did nothing to initiate this, nor do I know how to cancel it.

What’s the answer folks?

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Same problem here with current Virtualbox and crashing

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I have the free VMWare Player already installed on my computer. Will the Android software run as a VM under it, too?

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I attempted to follow Fred’s instructions only to be foiled when I got to the point of “Installing Android -X86 to harddisk. At that point repeated attempts resulted in the same screen message that is shown in Alex post number 30 below.

There was no way to get to the point where I could create a new partition. I even removed the VirtualBox to start over but when I arrived at the point of installing Android to harddisk it failed again.

There must be something that I’m overlooking but I have no clue what it might be. Apparently from the lounge posts no one else has a clue either except to say that there are better ways to do it. Those do not help much.

Thanks to whomever is able and willing to offer a solution.

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I attempted to follow Fred’s instructions only to be foiled when I got to the point of “Installing Android -X86 to harddisk. At that point repeated attempts resulted in the same screen message that is shown in Alex post number 30 below.

There was no way to get to the point where I could create a new partition. I even removed the VirtualBox to start over but when I arrived at the point of installing Android to harddisk it failed again.

I ran into the same thing but attributed to the fact that I am running on Windows 8.1 and could not open the Acceleration tab (grayed out) to set Enable VT-x.

See my posting below regarding my experience with Blue Stacks.

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No problem at all following Fred’s instructions on a Toshiba Satellite C55D-A with an AMD A4 processor running Windows 8.1.

To make Android on a PC more than a novelty, I would like to be able to expose the hardware WiFi card to Android so that I can run FarProc’s WiFi Analyzer.

Does anyone know if VirtualBox or VM Player can be tweaked to allow that or if BlueStacks or Geny Motion can be made to do so?

Thanks in advance!!

KNS

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I attempted to follow Fred’s instructions only to be foiled when I got to the point of “Installing Android -X86 to harddisk. At that point repeated attempts resulted in the same screen message that is shown in Alex post number 30 below.

There was no way to get to the point where I could create a new partition. I even removed the VirtualBox to start over but when I arrived at the point of installing Android to harddisk it failed again.

There must be something that I’m overlooking but I have no clue what it might be. Apparently from the lounge posts no one else has a clue either except to say that there are better ways to do it. Those do not help much.

Thanks to whomever is able and willing to offer a solution.

Hello,

I have exactly the same problem. Running host OS Windows 7 SP1 64-bit, virtualization enabled (Intel Core i5-2410M processor on an Asus X93SV laptop with 8 GB RAM). I’m quite experienced with running virtual machines (both Windows and Linux).

I followed Fred’s instructions to a T, to no avail. I even re-downloaded the Android-x86 ISO file (the very same build as described by Fred) in the case it got corrupted the first time, still no joy.

I’d welcome any suggestions, thanks.

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I walked thru the following steps with a buddy over the phone and somehow they worked for him.
I am not certain if these will work for you to reinstall the Android machine (as F.Langa’ instructions appear to be very thorough and bullet proof).
If you have been able to install the Oracle VM Virtual Box Manager(VM/VBM) and you can launch it successfully.
And you have the AndroidOS V43 “ISO” handy (either in a CD/DVD or on one of your HDDs) and you have a gmail account credentials, here is what I did to start from scratch(w/buddy) and on your behalf (not responsible for grammatical/typographical/contextual errors in the following instructions, though):
Re-launch VM/VBM on your PC;
1. Under the “Machine” pull-down menu >> click on “Discard Saved State {Ctrl+J}” if you have a non-working saved state and then >> acknowledge (Ack) by clicking the “Discard” button
2. If your previous >AndroidOS-V43> right click it and then >> select to “Remove {Ctrl+R}” and then >> Ack by clicking on “Remove Only” (or the next selection if appropriate)
3. You should now be greeted w/right pane of VM/VBM showing a “Welcome to Virtual Box” message (showing a colorful ButterFlyPenguinCube)
4. Click on the “New” blue icon below the 3 pull-down menus
5. Add name “AndroidOS-V43 (or as appropriate) and then >> Ack/confirm
6. In next screen “Create Virtual Machine” click on the 2nd radio button to “Create Virtual Hard Drive Now” and then >> Ack by clicking on “Create” button
7. On the next “Create Virtual Hard Drive” screen >> make file size something in the order of 4GB or so, using the slider control
8. Select “hard Drive File Type” to be the 1st Radio Button labeled “VDI” and then >> make sure that it has highlighted the “Dynamic Allocation” selection
9. Ack by clicking the “Create” button below
10. You should be back to the original VM/VBM screen with left pane below the 3 pull-down menus showing you the name you created for your android machine (=”AndroidOS-V43” above, or as appropriate)
11. Click the “Review” (orange gear icon) button to review settings for familiarization
12. Click the “Start” (green right-arrow icon)
13. On next screen that is asking where the “select start-up disk” is >> point to the location where you originally saved the AndroidOS-V43 “ISO” file
14. Finally, Ack w/clicking the “Start” button on bottom of this screen
15. If all is going smooth thus far >> on the next blue VM/VBM screen there should a about 4 selections/choices you can make as to how you want to run the Android virtual machine >> quickly select the type you want or it will default to the first highlighted selection after about 10 (?) seconds
16. On the next screen upon launch >> click on the note appearing right below the status bar and fully read (and absorb) about “mouse pointer integration” since you may need to use the keyboard right-side Ctrl key to enable/capture mouse (or not).
17. If all is not working right and you get nothing but a black screen for extended period >> whatever you do when exiting >> DO NOT save state.
18. If the mouse commands are not being captured during initial Android launch >> you can always navigate to the “START” button using your keyboard TAB key to highlight it.
19. I had this problem but patience using the TAB key and then using the 2 VM/VBM right bottom icons for mouse capturing (via right click selections) made things work a-ok for me.
20. The Android machine will now ask for your gmail account credentials >> but only if you were successful to get this far.
Else, go out and celebrate your independence (w/a few brewskis) from being tied to a PC all day long.
Cheers
For BeerTrucker especially Step8 above and for A1ex especially Steps16/18

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I have two different HP Intel laptops, one a few years old and the other one brand new and running a Core i7 chip.

As others have noted, the Virtual PC software does not run properly in the Windows 8.1 Environment. After trying on both laptops, where the Acceleration tab is grayed out, I finally gave up and installed Blue Stacks. This does install and run but is horribly slow, even on the i7 laptop. Also, the apps do not seem to run well at all, Skype, in particular, does not log in properly, and after getting in with an emailed code, it shows the account but none of the contacts. There is not even a place to tell Skype to load them. Trying to log in again from the Skype login screen just fails again. I think the integration with Windows, rather than being a plus is a big negative. Even though I haven’t yet seen the Virtual PC running, I think it would run much faster as it is taking over more of the system itself and not fully relying on Windows integration. Hopefully, they are working on a Windows 8 (8.1) update.

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Installed the latest version of Virtualbox 4.3.10 and Android 4.4 loaded fine!

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Thanks, I’ll try that and report back.

Later: I updated Virtual Box, and the installation of Android x86 4.4 RC1 went like a charm. Again my thanks!

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Installed the latest version of Virtualbox 4.3.10 and Android 4.4 loaded fine!

Same here; my host machine is a Mac, and something in 4.3.10 fixed the problem. Android running now!

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I liked this article “How to run Google’s Android OS on a Windows PC”. I have been using VMware player on my home PC for some time. I’ve wanted to move on to Virtual Box for a while now, since VirtualBox has more features, and is more widely used.

Following Fred Langa’s directions, I got it up and running tonight, it looks great! I was able to get Linux Mint running and a version of Android. I did have trouble with the android-x86-4.3-20130725.iso described in the article for some reason. Following the guide, I was able to get pretty much anything to boot and run correctly, from Ubuntu to Manjaro Linux with Openbox and most of the Android iso files that I ran across on the internet. I suspect there is some issue with the android-x86-4.3-20130725.iso file that I downloaded from here: https://code.google.com/p/android-x86/downloads/detail?name=android-x86-4.3-20130725.iso&can=2&q=

I’ve now downloaded it twice and checked the files SHA1 Checksum both times, and it will not boot correctly. I can get to the step: “Installation — Install Android-x86 to hard disk” and then press Enter.

After that I get an endless loop. Anyone else have this problem?

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I did have trouble with the android-x86-4.3-20130725.iso described in the article for some reason.

I did go and recheck my Virtual box installation and the android iso I mentioned. After rebooting my PC and taking some time to let things work on their own, I was able to resolve my issue. It must have just been my Virtual box installation, or something I missed. This Android OS operates just fine, as do the install scripts apparently. Apologize for not coming back sooner to correct my earlier claim.

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