Download Free Windows 11 22H2 Virtual Machines for Evaluation Purpose
UPDATE: Microsoft has updated the virtual machines to include the latest Windows 11 2022 Update (22H2) version. The article has been updated to include new information and links.
There are many people who want to test drive new Windows 11 operating system but don’t want to install the operating system in their devices. Here is a good news for those users.
Microsoft has released free Virtual Machines for Windows 11 which can be used to use and test Windows 11 in any computer system such as Windows 10 without actually installing Windows 11 in your computer system.
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Table of Contents
- What are Windows 11 Virtual Machines?
- Details of Windows 11 Virtual Machine Released by Microsoft
- What is Included in Windows 11 Enterprise Virtual Machine?
- How to Download Windows 11 Enterprise Virtual Machines?
- How to Install and Use Windows 11 Enterprise Virtual Machines?
- File Hashes of Windows 11 Enterprise Virtual Machines
What are Windows 11 Virtual Machines?
Virtual machines help users in testing any software or operating system in their computers without any need of installing the OS on their hard disk drives.
Many people are afraid of installing or upgrading to Windows 11 as it’s new and comes with lots of changes and missing features such as Start Menu and Taskbar restrictions, etc. Also the hardware requirements are very high of Windows 11 and many users who have old incompatible computer systems are unable to install Windows 11.
Related: Windows 11 System Requirements or Hardware Specifications
Windows 11 virtual machine will be the best option for those people who want to first test new features and changes present in Windows 11 before actually installing the operating system in their computers.
Remember Windows 11 virtual machine will not replace existing operating system installed in your computer. Consider the virtual machine as a general software which you’ll install in your computer.
Details of Windows 11 Virtual Machine Released by Microsoft
The virtual machine released by Microsoft contains Windows 11 Enterprise edition.
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The virtual machine will expire on January 10, 2023 which means you’ll have 2 months to use the virtual machine and test Windows 11.
The file size of virtual machine is 20 GB.
You’ll need a virtualization software to use Windows 11 virtual machine. Microsoft provides the virtual machine image file for all popular virtualization software such as VMWare, VirtualBox, Parallels and Windows built-in Hyper-V feature.
What is Included in Windows 11 Enterprise Virtual Machine?
The official Windows 11 virtual machine contains latest versions of Windows 11, developer tools, SDKs and sample codes as mentioned following:
- Window 11 Enterprise edition
- Visual Studio 2022 Community Edition with UWP, .NET Desktop, Azure, and Windows App SDK for C# workloads enabled
- Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 enabled with Ubuntu installed
- Developer mode enabled
- Windows Terminal installed
How to Download Windows 11 Enterprise Virtual Machines?
You can download the virtual machine files of Windows 11 from following official page at Microsoft website:
Download Windows 11 Enterprise Virtual Machines
For your convenience, here are the direct download links of Windows 11 virtual machines for popular virtualization software:
Download Windows 11 Enterprise Virtual Machine for VMWare
Download Windows 11 Enterprise Virtual Machine for Hyper-V
Download Windows 11 Enterprise Virtual Machine for VirtualBox
Download Windows 11 Enterprise Virtual Machine for Parallels
How to Install and Use Windows 11 Enterprise Virtual Machines?
Now you might be wondering how to use these virtual machines of Windows 11? Here is the procedure:
You’ll need to download and install a virtualization software in your Windows device to be able to use these virtual machines. You can download the software from their official websites.
Or you can use the built-in Hyper-V feature which comes preinstalled with Windows operating system to install and use Windows 11 virtual machine.
Following tutorial will help you in enabling and use Hyper-V feature in Windows:
[Tip] Install and Test Operating Systems Virtually in Windows Using Hyper-V
File Hashes of Windows 11 Enterprise Virtual Machines
Here are the file hashes of all virtual machine files if you want to verify the downloaded file:
Filename: WinDev2210Eval.HyperV.zip
- Length: 21700487439
- FileHash: DCA0CEBC253013992D57F052D8FDAC01BB9DBE93857BC3579D37FF9F5DA43A7C
Filename: WinDev2210Eval.Parallels.zip
- Length: 20925435211
- FileHash: 1D228711A9C24D9BD900D50E00A7CC5B28F5DFDD94D78CAEBA5BEE17083B158A
Filename: WinDev2210Eval.VirtualBox.zip
- Length: 22223642395
- FileHash: C3792EB2D0CB8E52EC24089E1867A5FDE9BD3C89B8022F547350C32824CF960D
Filename: WinDev2210Eval.VMware.zip
- Length: 24262556028
- FileHash: 6396BEC828E0AC49EB31E4EEEFDE4548E692024CD879BCB9C6022257697815DE
You can check and verify file hashes using following utilities:
Hash Reporter: Free Portable Utility to Calculate and Verify Hash Codes
Also Check:
I do not believe these VMs are 22H2 but 22H1 instead. Neowin also incorrectly reported this, perhaps as well as other tech news sites. This particular image version (2210) has been out at least quite a few weeks and I booted it up then and it was 22H1.
^^ I don’t know about other sites but I received notification about the new virtual machines in MVP group as well as some private MS groups. I personally checked the filenames and links before updating this old article. The links were updated for version 2210 which is 22H2 actually. The expiry date has been updated as well. Previously it was January 2022 and now it’s January 2023.