Need some computer help

[Damion Habeck]

Woohoo! I have just set up my Shapeoko 3XL! I intend to run their native machine control software and forgot my older windows Xp might not be compatible. Are there any FREE computers at the space or other ways (softwares ) to get windows 7 or higher? I have a monitor and everything else. I should add that It must be desktop since I need ports and steady power.
Thanks!
Damion

[Chris Lane]

You might be able to accomplish this using virtual machines.

I did this a few months ago for my non-XL Shapeoko 3, though I was running a Linux VM inside of a Linux host. I wrote about it here:

https://chris-allen-lane.com/blog/post/connecting-a-shapeoko-3-to-virtualbox

VirtualBox is available on Windows, so you might be able to glean some settings from that post.

Next, Microsoft provides free virtual machine images for use in browser testing. You can download them here:

https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/tools/vms/

One note: if you do set up a VM, note that the license expires after 30 days. Some machines allow you to simply "re-arm" the license indefinitely from the command-line, and some do not, so make sure you know what you're dealing with so your machine doesn't evaporate on you.

For those machines that can't be "re-armed", just take a snapshot of the virtual disk after you have the machine configured that you can restore to later.

(BTW: if this sounds like piracy, this is actually what Microsoft says to do. This raises obvious questions but, whatever.)

Good luck!

[Damion Habeck]

Thanks for the info Chris! 

Sent from my iPhone

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