I know this is not exactly on topic for design but it is round the same thing so bare with me.
When I had university a while now, I got into an opperating systems class.
I had to use linux on a system, I was given a distribution and told to install it.
I also had to install a copy of windows on a drive.
Ofcause access wize the stuff that was round for the course wasn't.
So I simply talked through how I would install the oses, and the lecturer installed both oses on the drive and I got the credit.
He then tried to make linux accessible but no good.
This was back before I found about grml, so I carried round my windows computer for windows stuff, and an old 100 dollar piece of crap computer I got from a company who didn't want it anymore.
It had something on it, and I had a dectalk which I had to rythmically bash to get to work right every system startup and it lasted that way for 6 months.
In another case in a programming course I almost quit because the version of pascal they were using had no accessible program to use.
By chance I remembered a place where I had found something that was an interface which was and which at the time worked.
I was then able to finnish it.
Those courses had happy endings.
In the case of windows I couldn't use it on the university system with a lot of modifications and security and the like.
I had never used vmware, and if I ever did it again, I would ask if I could run things via vmware image.