How to Create a Portable Virtual Windows 8.1

by Miguel · January 1, 2014

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The idea of portable application is that they don’t need any installation, they don’t add anything to your registry and they don’t install any new services or drivers. We can run the program, just by double-clicking it and to uninstall the program, just delete the file(s) that make up the application.

Difference between Portable Windows and portable Virtual Windows is:

Portable Windows: You would need to boot from the USB thumb drive which has the Windows 8.1 already installed, allowing you to use just one operating system. Also you would need to change the boot sequence to be able to successfully boot from the USB, which can be rather difficult doing on someone Else’s Computer.

Portable Virtual Windows: No need to change the boot sequence, it can be run on any computer with an already running Operating System, it can handle multiple Operating Systems virtually, and all we need to be careful is that the external drive adopts the same drive letter when plugin it to a computer system.

Video Tutorial:

To Create a Portable Virtual Windows 8.1:

1. We need a 50GB or higher thumb drive or External HDD.

2. A Windows 8 Disk or .ISO

3. Download Portable VirtualBox

4. Run the executable you downloaded and extract the contents to your external USB drive.

5. A Portable-VirtualBox folder is created on your external USB drive. Navigate to the Portable-VirtualBox folder and double-click to run Portable-VirtualBox.exe file.

6. The Portable-VirtualBox dialog box displays. Select the options “Extract the files for a 32 and 64-Bit and system” and click the Download installation file of VirtualBox button.

7. Now run Portable-VirtualBox.exe if prompted “Please start VirtualBox again, so that all paths can be adapted!” that means to re-start Portable-VirtualBox

8. In VirtualBox click ‘New’ button with a blue sun icon.

9. Name your Operating System. Click next *Tip : If you input Windows 7 as the name of your Virtual Machine, the OS Type and Version will auto-populate to
Windows 8.

10. Next, select the amount of RAM.

11. Create a virtual hard drive now. Create.

12. VDI (Virtual Disk Image). Next

13. Dynamically allocated. Next

14. In the File location and size window click on Create button.

15. Select the Windows 8 from the left pain of Virtualbox click start.

16. Select the Disk location or .ISO and follow the prompts for a windows 7 installation.