Virtual PC was originally developed as a Macintosh application for System 7.5 and released by Connectix in June 1997.

Connectix sold versions of Virtual PC bundled with a variety of guest operating systems, including Windows, OS/2, and Red Hat Linux.

Under agreement with Connectix, Innotek GmbH (makers of VirtualBox, now part of Oracle) ported version 5.0 to run on an OS/2 host.

On July 12, 2006, Microsoft released Virtual PC 2004 SP1 for Windows free of charge, however the Mac version remained a paid software.

It ran on Mac OS X 10.2.8 or later for PowerPC and was a proprietary commercial software product.

It added support for hardware virtualization, "undo disks", transfer statistic monitor for disk and network, and viewing virtual machines on multiple monitors and support for Windows Vista as both host and guest.

A security update was released on July 14, 2009 to address an elevation of privilege vulnerability in guest operating systems.

Previously, both the CPU and motherboard of the host had to support hardware virtualization,[39] but an update in early 2010 eliminated this requirement.

[40] Pre-installed integration components allow applications running within the virtualized environment to appear as if running directly on the host,[22][41] sharing the native desktop and start menu of Windows 7 as well as participating in file type associations.

[44] Virtual PC emulates the following environments:[45] Implementation: Virtual PC 4 requires Mac OS 8.5 or later on a G3 or G4 processor, but running Windows Me, Windows 2000 or Red Hat Linux requires Mac OS 9.0 or later.

To run Virtual PC 5 in Mac OS X, a 400 MHz or faster processor is required.

Although a number of popular host and guest operating systems lack official Microsoft support, there are sometimes few, if any, technical obstacles impeding installation.

[50][51] A program manager on Microsoft's core virtualization team explains what official support entails: With each release of Virtual PC we spend a significant amount of time trying to decide which (guest) operating system should be officially supported.

[60] Some Linux distributions must be installed in text mode, as they do not support Microsoft Virtual PC's emulated graphics chip.

Some websites specialize in listing operating systems that run successfully as Virtual PC guests, to help users avoid issues when installing Linux distributions or other operating systems lacking official Microsoft support.

Microsoft stated, "Alternative solutions offered by Apple and other vendors, combined with a fully packaged retail copy of Windows, will satisfy this need.