Microsoft Temporarily Took Down Some Windows 11 Evaluation Virtual Machines Due to Technical Issues

TapTechNews August 2nd news, due to "ongoing technical issues", Microsoft temporarily took down some Windows 11 evaluation virtual machines (also known as Windows development environments) on July 15th.

In simple terms, the Microsoft Win11 development environment is a virtual machine based on the Windows 11 Enterprise Edition and contains a bunch of development tools. There are four options in total: Hyper-V, VMware, Parallels, and VirtualBox. Microsoft took down the VMware and Parallels versions last month, and the VMware version has now been restored.

Microsoft usually updates the official virtual machine once a month after releasing the Tuesday patch update. However, for some reason, Microsoft skipped the June update, resulting in the latest Windows development environment remaining at version 2404, while the VMware system has now been updated to the latest version 2407, and the relevant issues have been fixed.

Microsoft said that the Parallels version of the Windows development environment 2407 is still missing. The official WDE webpage indicates that the virtual machine is unavailable due to "ongoing technical issues".

In addition to releasing the VMware version WDE2407, Microsoft also updated the expiration date. For example, the 2407 version will expire on October 29th (previously October 9th).

TapTechNews note: The official virtual machine of Microsoft can be used for free for 90 days and does not support activation with a genuine license. If the evaluation period expires, the system desktop background will turn black and a permanent desktop notification will pop up, and the computer will shut down automatically every hour.