Portable Virtual Machine No Admin
How to have a portable virtual machine without admin priviliges? Discussion in 'Virtualization' started by omareg94, Oct 3, 2014. Tags: admin hack in win8.1. Copied the qemu directory onto a USB stick and then onto the machine with no admin rights, just under the user account (C: Users username qemu) Opened CMD prompt and cd’d into qemu, which is where the executable files live. By the way, 'THE VIRTUAL MACHINE IS VERY PORTABLE'. You can copy/move the virtual machine simply by copying/moving the files. VMware Player is also supported on Windows Vista, Windows 2000, Mac OS X and Linux, so your virtual machine with Babyz can easily be moved to other computers later on. I think that, skirts around Portable VMware very.
Recently, I went to a client, where they assigned me a machine to work, but there was no software installed, and there was no admin rights to install any software. I had to set up my box to start development before all the red tape could be set, licenses assigned, software installed and so on.
So I thought to setup a box where I could install the software as standard user, with no need of any special licenses to get up und running for development in Dotnet Core and React with Typescript (the same steps can be used to develop with Angular or any other Javascript environment).
Initially, I installed Google Chrome (its developer tools are great and you can debug your Javascript apps in it). I went to Chrome site (https://www.google.com/chrome/), downloaded the installer and ran it. When it asked me the admin credentials, I clicked Cancel and the installer offered to install as Standard User.
Then I installed Visual Studio Code. It’s a terrific IDE to edit your programs (in any language) and even debug your apps. There are extensions to do everything, it’s really great. I used a direct link to download the portable version and unzip the zip file and add the path to VSCode with this Powershell script:
The next step is to install Node.js (https://nodejs.org/). Node.js is a JavaScript runtime, where you can run your Javascript Apps. I went to the Node site saw that there is a zip file for Windows (https://nodejs.org/dist/v12.13.0/node-v12.13.0-win-x64.zip). I created this Powershell script to download and install Node LTS:
Portable Virtual Machine No Admin Fee
You can open a Powershell window and type these commands or you can downlad and run the script file from my GitHub (link below).
The next step is to install Yarn (https://yarnpkg.com/lang/en/), a dependency manager running this command in the command line
The last step is to install Dotnet core. There is no package to install it as a standar user, but there is a Powershell script to install it at https://dot.net/v1/dotnet-install.ps1. If you open a Powershell window and run the commands:
Now you are all set, your development machine is ready to go. To create a React app, just open a command line window and type these commands:
If you point your browser to http://localhost:3000, you will see:
Running Code . will open VS Code with the project folder open:
You can also create an Asp.NET Core MVC with the commands:
And open http://localhost:5000 in the browser to see the app running:
As you can see, with a few steps, you can setup a developer machine with no need of admin rights nor the need of any license, you can now start developing your full apps and debug them in VS Code.
That way, I could start and run from day one, and when the full install came, I was already developing.
After finishing the setting, I noticed that all the scripts are very similar, so I created a single script, Install-FromWeb:
When I was pushing the data to my GitHub, I noticed that Git for Windows (https://gitforwindows.org/) wasn’t installed. I checked the Git for Windows site and there is a portable version in https://github.com/git-for-windows/git/releases/download/v2.24.0.windows.2/PortableGit-2.24.0.2-64-bit.7z.exe. With it, you can use Git as a version control system. With that, you can install your machine with a single set of instructions:
All the scripts are in my Github : https://github.com/bsonnino/DevMachine
So, happy development!
We’ve got a Windows 10 notebook and an old game that won’t run on this version of Windows. I have install disks for Windows 98, but we do not have administrator access so we cannot install VirtualBox.
QEMU can do this, kind of.
Went to https://qemu.weilnetz.de/w64/.
Downloaded installer. Ran it.
But it wants admin password…
OK, went to Win 10 machine where I do have admin rights and installed there (both machines 64 bit). It went into C:Program Filesqemu.
Copied the qemu directory onto a USB stick and then onto the machine with no admin rights, just under the user account (C:Usersusernameqemu)
Opened CMD prompt and cd’d into qemu, which is where the executable files live. Ran
This created a 1 GB hard drive in native QEMU format (qcow2). So far so good. Tried to boot it.
OK, the accelerator probably needs admin access to install a driver or something (I’m guessing, and too lazy to find out for sure; for now I just want to see if something will work). But it might run (slowly) without it.
Note: this just says to read the CD from the actual D: (could also be an image file) and to boot from D:.
Portable Virtual Machine No Admin
Booted from CD ROM!
Then install — no worries. Step through the usual tedious Windows 98 install procedure. But it is slow. The lack of acceleration is apparent.
Once install done, shutdown and rebooted with:
which boots from C: not the cdrom (D:)
Install completed OK.
Machine boots OK and runs but yes is very slow.
Put in game CD
Not found.
Cannot seem to be able to change CDs once VM is running. Need to reboot to change CDs. I don’t know much about QEMU. Closed down and rebooted with game CD in drive. Installed no worries.
Tried to install SciTech display doctor, but it could not find the info it needed, so stuck with 640×480, 16 colours. Tried reboot with -vga cirrus selected on command line, did not help, Windows 98 still just using generic VGA with minimal capabilities.
Booted without CD:
Cheat engine company of heroes 2. Conclusion and to do
It works but is very slow, though the host system is not all that powerful. OK for basic board games, but nothing fancy.
Having said that, I have not spent any time trying to optimise it and it looks to me like anything that does not need admin rights would work, and so I suspect the graphics and sound and all that could be sorted out if I wanted to spend the time. There might be something I can do with acceleration, don’t know yet.
The bottom line is that QEMU does give a working VM running on a Windows 10 host without the need for administrator rights, but it is slow. Could be useful for messing around with old files or programs. Once an application is open, it’s not too bad as long as it is not very graphics-intensive.