Microsoft fails to provide Windows 10 VM images for developers

Enlarge / Image not found: why has it taken Microsoft five days (and counting) to upload fresh developer VM images for non-Hyper-V platforms? (credit: Sean Gladwell / Getty Images)

Microsoft typically makes Windows 10 Enterprise virtual machine images available to independent developers via its developer.microsoft.com portal. For some reason, that process seems to have fallen through the cracks this month—images are available now for Microsoft’s Hyper-V hypervisor but are conspicuously missing for competing hypervisors VMWare, Parallels, and VirtualBox.

Ars first became aware of this problem via impassioned tweets from Matthew Boyette, an Ars reader and independent developer whose workflow depends on these Windows 10 Enterprise VM images. The images themselves are decidedly ephemeral—they expire each month, requiring devs using the program to download new, refreshed images.

June’s developer VM images expired five days ago (July 10), and despite several days of Boyette’s angry tweets, the missing VM images are still missing. While VM images for Hyper-V—Microsoft’s own hypervisor—were uploaded to the portal on time, devs who use VMWare, VirtualBox, or Parallels to host their virtual machines are still out of luck.