QEMU

The Quick Emulator (QEMU) is a free and open-source emulator that uses dynamic binary translation to emulate a computer’s processor; that is, it translates the emulated binary codes to an equivalent binary format which is executed by the machine.

Table of Contents

Modes

  • User-mode emulation: runs single Linux or macOS programs that were compiled for a different instruction set. Useful for cross-compilation.
  • System emulation: emulates a full computer system, including peripherals.
  • Hypervisor support: acts as a virtual machine manager (VMM)

Installation

Download QEMU for Windows (qemu.org). Installers are available here.

Usage

Programs to run are located (default install) at “C:\Program Files\qemu\”. For example:

"C:\Program Files\qemu\qemu-system-x86_64"

ISO file

qemu-system-x86_64.exe -cdrom <filename>.iso -boot d -m 2048
"C:\Program Files\qemu\qemu-system-x86_64.exe" -cdrom "C:\Users\Public\kali-linux-2025.4-installer-amd64.iso" -boot d -m 2048

QCOW2

"C:\Program Files\qemu\qemu-system-x86_64.exe" -hda "C:\Users\Public\kali-linux-2025.4-qemu-amd64\kali-linux-2025.4-qemu-amd64.qcow2"

Reference