Is it possible to install Android on a PC? Installing Android x86. Now let's move directly to the example

As you know, the Android operating system is usually installed on smartphones and tablets. You can also find it on set-top boxes. But what should you do if you want to try something designed for Android program, A portable device not at hand? In this case, you can install an emulator - for this you will need a laptop or desktop computer with Windows or Mac OS X on board.

Some people don't understand why Android can't be installed on a computer like Microsoft's operating system. They think that such a restriction was introduced because computer equipment, which is not supported by the mobile operating system. This is partly true. Manufacturers of video cards and many other components do not write their own drivers for Android. But the most main reason lies in something else.

The fact is that each operating system is tailored strictly to a specific processor architecture. Products are installed on computers Intel And AMD. It is created by architecture x86, and x64(actually the same x86 architecture, but 64-bit). Such chipsets simply will not understand the code used in Android. The mobile operating system requires a completely different processor - one that has the architecture ARM. A similar chipset has smaller sizes and minimal energy consumption, and its operating principles are completely different. This is why installing Android on PC is impossible. But no one forbids using an emulator, as happens when running games on a computer from very old consoles.

But in in this case we're talking about about the so-called real Android. However, enthusiasts along with mobile version They are also developing a stationary version of this operating system. This is what it's called: Android x86. It can already be used as the main operating system. At the time of writing (November 2016), there was a build based on version 6.0 of Marshmallow.

Don't forget that computer hardware manufacturers don't support Android at all. In this regard, do not wait stable operation this operating system on your PC. You will regularly encounter freezes and other problems. Installing applications will also be more complicated, since you will not be given full access to Google Play content.

Installing Android x86

In this material we will not talk in detail about installing a mobile operating system on a PC. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, this process is quite lengthy and labor-intensive, and therefore its description deserves a separate material. Secondly, from time to time new versions of Android x86 appear, the installation of which is slightly and sometimes quite different. And writing about the installation of each version is pointless. And you can easily familiarize yourself with the installation methods on the site from which the operating system image is downloaded. Therefore, we will note only the most important aspects this process:

The operating system is distributed as an image in the format .iso or .img. You can view its contents using Ultra ISO, Alcohol 120% and other similar programs.
To install the operating system, you first need to write it to a disk or USB flash drive. In the second case, first make sure that your motherboard supports OS installation from external storage.
Android installation x86 is possible on any computer, including those released by Apple.
Possible Android installation x86 as an additional OS. In that Windows case will remain unharmed.
During installation, the operating system will require you to format the partition intended for it. Select NTFS and FAT32 as the format system.
The Android x86 operating system does not require much space. Theoretically, 8 GB may be enough. But it is better to allocate at least 16 GB. However, it all depends on your methods of using this OS.
Once the installation is complete, you will need to configure the time, connection to global web and perform other similar actions. In this regard, the process is almost no different from what you do after purchasing a new smartphone.

Note: installation of a full-fledged Android x86 OS is required only if you are going to use it on permanent basis. In particular, this is useful for application developers. In other cases, it is better to use an emulator.

Using an emulator

You can easily install an Android emulator on your PC - no special knowledge is required. But you will definitely be surprised at how many different emulators there are. They differ from each other not only in the OS version, but also in all sorts of additional features. This is confirmed by our material entitled "Best Android Emulators on PC". Some creations of developers are designed to simplify testing of simple applications, others are used to launch heavy games, while others completely meet some specific requirements.

In order to install Android on your computer this way, you first need to download the emulator itself. It should be selected based on the tasks assigned, as well as the power of the available computer components. Technical requirements You should search on the official website of the developers of the selected Android emulator. Although now it’s hard not to keep up necessary requirements- usually similar program A few gigabytes of hard disk space is enough, quad core processor and approximately 8 GB random access memory. Rarely does an emulator require more.

You can find out the characteristics of your computer using the “System Properties” button, located in the “Computer” section, which can be accessed by opening the “Start” menu.

Let's install the emulator using an example Genymotion. This program supports many pre-configured Android images. It can emulate an Internet connection using a variety of wireless modules. The emulator can work not only on Windows And Mac OS X, but also on Linux, which will be appreciated by application developers working in large companies.

Step 1. First you need to create an account on the site http://www.genymotion.com. Enter your desired login, your email address, Create a password. In line Company Type select " Personal use" or " N/A" In line Usage Type You can select any value; this will not affect the functionality of the emulator in any way. Also indicate your country, after which you can check the box next to the link to license agreement and click on the " Create an account».

Step 2. If the login is busy, you will be asked to enter a different name. Next to yours email You will receive an email containing a link to activate your account. Follow it.

Step 3. Click on the red button " Continue».

Step 4. Now click on the button Download", located in top menu site.

Step 5. Here you need to click on one of the two red buttons, depending on whether you have installed VirtualBox. If you don't have Windows, then download links special versions look for the emulator below.

Step 6. If necessary, click on the " Save».

Step 7 Run the downloaded EXE file. If necessary, click the appropriate button.

Step 8 Select your installation language. Click the button OK».

Step 9 Let the settings be left as default. Click the button Next».

Step 10 The name of the program in the Start menu can also be left as default. Click on the button Next».

Step 11 Leave a checkmark if you want the emulator icon to appear on your desktop. Click the button Next».

Step 12 Click on the button Install».

Note: VirtualBox is required by many Android emulators. Genymotion is no exception to the rule.

Step 14 In the window that opens, don’t touch anything - just click on the “ Next».

Step 15 Uncheck the box next to " Create a shortcut in the Quick Launch Bar" You can leave the checkboxes next to the remaining two items. As a last resort, you can always remove the VirtualBox icon from your desktop if you find it unnecessary. Click on the button Next».

Step 16 Click the button Yes».

Step 17 Click the button Install».

Step 18 Click the button Install" These are virtual USB ports. Then the virtual ones will be installed in the same way network adapters And network service. Press the button each time Install».

Step 19 Leave the checkbox and click " Finish».

Step 20. Do the same here.

Step 22 Click the button Yes» to add the first virtual device.

Step 23 Click on the button Sign in" to log into your account.

Step 24 Enter your username and password.

Step 25 You should now have a list of virtual devices with different screen resolutions and different version operating system. You can filter the list using the corresponding items at the top of the window. Decide on the device and click the " Next».

Step 26 Give the virtual device a name. You can leave the one specified by default. Click the button Next».

Step 27 Wait until the files are downloaded and installed and click the " Finish».

Step 28 Now all you have to do is select the virtual device that appears and click the “ Start" In the future, to add other devices, click on the " Add».

Note: If VirtualBox gives an error, this may indicate that virtualization is disabled in the BIOS. You'll have to go to the BIOS and enable this technology.

If everything goes well, you will soon see a desktop in front of you, familiar to you. different tablets and smartphones. With the only exception that adjusting the volume and selecting other parameters will be done using virtual icons.

That's all, you managed to install Android on your computer!

Installing the Android operating system on a netbook is a completely logical and reasonable decision in the context of development cloud technologies and corresponding trends. The very idea of an inexpensive device, the main purpose of which is to provide access to the Internet, determines its key characteristics:

absence of a hard disk drive in its traditional representation, device external memory implemented either on external memory cards or on solid state drives data;
lack of an optical drive, a device for reading data from CD or DVD discs;
small screen size (within 12 inches);
light weight and low power consumption compared to similar devices;
relatively low price.

Based on purpose modern gadgets, Android company Inc has developed a specific operating system based on the UNXI kernel. Subsequently Google company bought this solution and is currently supporting it on different platforms. Based on open source the operating system turned out to be very successful and easily adaptable to the needs of smartphones, tablet computers, televisions and other household and industrial devices. It is openness source code and created by Google special libraries allowed for a short time create great amount all kinds of custom and system programs for android devices.

At the end of last year, 90% of gadgets sold ran this operating system.

Cloud technologies

An important factor in the popularization of Android as an operating system was the company's development Google services, largely replacing Microsoft programs Office. Now the user does not necessarily have to have applications on his device that allow him to create and edit texts, work with spreadsheets, databases. You can process and catalog images, conduct correspondence and exchange data of any nature in on-line mode; for this, your computer only needs to have modern internet browser. By the way, Google takes responsibility for the safety of your data.

The development of cloud technologies and services implies an increase bandwidth access channels in global network, but this is facilitated by the popularization wifi access and development of 3G/4G technologies. Thus, a netbook, originally created exclusively for web surfing, with the development of cloud technologies turns into a full-fledged personal computer.

Installing Android on a netbook is completely logical and justified. Android as an operating system is completely free software product, and this factor may be decisive when choosing software netbook.

Installing the OS on a netbook

Let's take a closer look at how to install Android on a netbook. First, you need to understand whether this operating system will even work on the selected device. If yes, then we perform the actions in the following sequence:

Installing android starts with choosing the most suitable version, corresponding to the target device on a specialized site. File iso format is an image boot disk operating system.
Since the netbook does not have optical drive, then you need to emulate it by placing the operating system image on a USB flash drive. The image size is about 500 MB, i.e. you need a drive of the appropriate size. Let's format this flash drive using standard applications netbook.
Let's do it USB drive bootable and transfer to it the image of the android operating system, which was copied from the project website. Suitable for this UNetbootin program or something similar.
Once created bootable flash drive, you need to indicate to the netbook that the download will be done from USB devices. This is done by the appropriate BIOS settings.
We reboot the netbook, if everything went fine, then we will be in boot menu, which will offer to either install the system on the selected disk partition, or boot without installation (trial mode).

We start using the trial mode by setting up the device. It is important to remember that due to the fact that the boot occurred from an external drive, all settings made will not be saved after the device is turned off. You will need to do:

setting the system language;
keyboard settings (mechanism for switching between Russian and English layouts different from the traditional one);
setting up access to the network, you will need to specify the settings for connecting to the Internet via wifi (encryption method, network name, password);
registration in the cloud Google storage, if there is no corresponding account, you will have to go through the registration process;
final stage trial setup is to install an application from the Play Market.

If everything went smoothly in the trial mode, the system works stably, you have full access to your Google account, All required applications start and work, you can proceed to full installation Android operating system on the device. The procedure is similar to launching a trial system: reboot the netbook, select Installation (Install Android-x86 to harddisk). It is very important here to correctly determine physical device, on which the Android system will be installed.

Most flexible solution— creating a multi-boot disk that allows you to use a netbook running different operating systems depending on the situation.

IN Lately Smartphones and tablets running on the Android operating system are widely popular. And this is obvious: high system performance, synchronization capabilities various devices, many games and applications.

This is why more and more computer users are interested in the question of how to install the Android operating system on a computer.

If you want to use only the Android operating system on your laptop or computer, format the hard drive on which the old operating system is installed and install Android on this partition. If you want to use Android along with the operating system installed on your computer, you need to create a new hard drive partition and install Android on this partition.

I have an operating system installed on my laptop Windows system 7, so in the article I will describe in detail what needs to be done to install Android nearby with the main operating system.

To download the Android operating system for your computer, you need to go to the official website of the Android-x86 project developers:

http://www.android-x86.org/download

Here, select the version of Android you want to install and click on the “View” button. After this, the image download will begin.

Creating a new disk partition

The site already has an article on how to partition a hard drive in Windows 7. Therefore, below I will simply provide screenshots with a short description.

Go to “Start” - right click mouse “Computer” - “Management”.

In the next window, select "Disk Management".

A window will open with information about installed hard. I have one, divided into sections C: and D:. Select the partition from which part of the memory will be taken to create a new one, right-click on it and click “Shrink Volume”.

Now you need to wait a little.

Next, select the required amount of memory for the new partition. It all depends on how you plan to use the Android OS. If you will install a lot of games, choose more, the main thing is not to exceed the available memory. For example, I have enough memory on my phone, so I enter 5 GB. Click Compress.

Appeared new section.

Right-click on it and select "Create Simple Volume".

Here we set the maximum value for the volume size and click “Next”.

Now assign an unused drive letter and click Next.

We format the section, you can give it a name, click “Next”.

To complete creating the new volume, click Finish.

In the list of sections hard drive You should have another one, with given name and memory capacity.

Creating a bootable USB flash drive

Please note that the selected flash drive will be formatted and all data from it will be erased. To avoid loss important information, copy everything necessary files from it to the computer.

You can create a bootable USB flash drive using special programs. I will use the free program Rufus. We insert the flash drive into the port of the laptop or computer and launch Rufus program. Choose required device and the FAT32 file system. To create a bootable flash drive, click on the disk icon and select the downloaded image on your computer. Press the “Start” button.

If you see the following window, select the desired item and click “OK”. First I put a marker in the point “Burn in ISO image mode”, but it was not possible to boot from the flash drive. Then I created a bootable USB flash drive again and selected “Write in DD-image mode” and everything worked out.

As soon as the bootable USB flash drive with Android OS is created, the following window will appear, click “Close” in it.

Download priority

Here I’ll tell you briefly: reboot the computer and go into the BIOS - press F2 or Del; go to the “Boot” section; put the flash drive first in the list; save the settings and exit the BIOS.

Installing a new OS

After you exit the BIOS, the computer will boot from the flash drive. The following window will appear. In it you will choose "Install Android-x86 to harddisk"– installing Android OS on your hard drive. Press "Enter".

You can move between different items using the arrows; if you need to select an item, press “Enter” on it.

Next you need to select the hard drive partition to install the operating system: sda1, sda2... I was afraid of making a mistake, so I selected “Create/Modify partitions” and clicked “OK”.

The following menu opens. All devices connected to the laptop are shown here: sda – installed hard disk, sdb – connected flash drives, mmcblk0 – memory card. I'm interested in the hard drive, so I select "Harddisk" and press "Enter".

In the next window, we look at the name of the hard drive partition that we just created. I set the memory volume to 5 GB, which corresponds to a disk partition called sda6. To exit from of this menu Use the Right arrow to select Quit and press Enter.

A familiar window will open; in it, feel free to select the desired hard drive partition - for me it’s sda6.

Next you need to select the type file system. To install Android OS, it is recommended to select ext3 or ext2, data will not be saved in fat32, and ntfs is not supported.

Now we confirm the formatting of the selected hard section disk to the desired file system - click “Yes”.

The next window will ask you to install GRUB boot loader, since without it Android simply will not start on the computer, click “Yes”.

In order to be able to choose which operating system to load when you turn on your computer: Android or Windows, click “Yes”.

Now you need to install another bootloader, click “Yes”.

Initially, Android did not have support for computers with x86 architecture, and older versions were intended exclusively for mobile devices. Now there are no restrictions. On the website of the developers of the Android-x86 project, you can download a distribution kit of the system, which can be installed on any computer without any problems. The latest version available for installation is Android 7.1.

When choosing a distribution, pay attention to . If your computer uses x86 architecture, you need to download the appropriate installation package. You can view the system type in the “Computer” properties.

Creating installation media

To burn the distribution to a flash drive, use the Rufus program. Connect the drive to your computer and set the settings in Rufus as shown in the screenshot. Choose to create an ISO image and click on the drive icon to provide the path to the downloaded Android file.

When asked about the recording type, select ISO. During creation bootable media All data will be deleted from the flash drive.

Launch without installation

The Android-x86 distribution has the function of starting the system without installation. In this mode you can use all Android features, but the changes made are not saved. Essentially, this is a demo mode that helps you understand whether it will be convenient to work with Android on a computer.

Restart your computer and boot from the flash drive - the same as with . Select the first item in the menu Run Android without installation.

After a short boot, the language selection screen and other initial settings will appear. At this point, your keyboard, mouse, and touchpad should work if you're running Android on a laptop. You don’t have to configure anything - the configuration is not saved in this mode anyway.

Click "Next" until you get to main screen systems. Check how this works Android version on the computer. Wi-Fi, connection via local network, video playback - everything should work by default, without additional settings.

Installing the system

If you want to have two systems running on your computer, install Android. Installation on a Windows partition will completely erase the system. For Android you need to allocate at least 8 GB of free space. Optimal size- 16 GB.

On the installer screen, click on the last item Install Android to harddisk. Select the section dedicated to Android.

Specify the file system FAT32 or NTFS. A warning will appear indicating that all data from the selected partition will be destroyed. Click Yes.

Accept the offer to install the GRUB boot loader. Install the EFI GRUB2 subkey if you are installing Android on a computer with UEFI. If you have a regular BIOS, click Skip.

Click Yes in the “Do you want to install/system directory as read-write?” dialog to be able to overwrite data on the system.

Wait for the installation to complete. After installation, you will be prompted to create a user partition within the system. Click Yes and set the size to 2000 MB.

Click Run Android to complete the installation. Initial setup The system is completely the same as turning on a new Android device for the first time: you need to select a language, Wi-Fi network and add a Google account.

Android-x86 is not the only desktop version of Android. For variety, you can put . It is positioned as a system that is easier to install and learn, which was immediately created for a computer, although it is based on the Android ecosystem.

Popularity of the operating room Android systems is growing every day, which is explained by the availability of access to unique content from Google Play, a large number interesting applications, games, high performance systems and a minimum number of malicious objects that are written specifically for this OS. Therefore, users often ask the question: how to install Android on a PC without losing the data of the second system?

Preparing your computer for installing Android OS

Before you install Android on your computer, you need to create a boot disk. To do this, download from this section any suitable software, for example Alcohol 120%, DAEMON Tools or UltraISO and install it on your PC.

Now download any version of Android OS that you want to install.

After downloading installation file launch the software to create a boot disk. IN in this example will be the UltraISO used. Launch the program, click “File”, “New”, “CD/DVD image with data”. Add the file and click Write.

If you have one installed on your PC HDD, you need to create a separate partition on the HDD. To do this, you can use Acronis Disc Director Suite or download MiniTool Partition Wizard.

Launch Acronis Disc Director Suite, select the disk on which the new OS will be installed and click “Create partition”.

A new window will open. Enter the name of the section, then select “File system”, click “Create as” logical drive, indicate the disk size and click “OK”.

The section has been created.

Installing Android OS on a computer

Reboot the PC and go into the BIOS by clicking F2 or Del a couple of times. Go to the Boot section and select Boot Device Priority. A list of options will appear boot devices. Select your drive.

In the next dialog box, the system will prompt you to select a partition to boot. Typically this will be sda1 and sda2. Select the first one if you made a partition on drive C.

Now you need to select the file system type. For Android, ext2 and ext3 are acceptable. A type such as NTFS is not supported by the OS, and FAT32 is not recommended.

After selecting the file system type, you must accept a special bootloader. Without which Android will not boot. Click “Yes” and click “Enter”.

After OS determine installed version system, and will also offer to integrate a universal bootloader for both OSes. Click “Yes”, since this operation is very important. With its help, you can select the desired system at the start of your computer.