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From the Microsoft Store. It costs US$29.99, with a 30-day free trial, and runs on Windows 10 (version 1809 or later) and Windows 11, on x64 and ARM64 PCs. The Store keeps it up to date.

No. Guestbay includes QEMU, unmodified, and updates it with the app.

If Guestbay says its QEMU is missing or won’t run, repair Guestbay: Settings › Apps › Installed apps › Guestbay › Advanced options › Repair (on Windows 10, Apps & features instead of Installed apps).

Yes, on an x64 PC with Windows Hypervisor Platform turned on: guests run directly on your processor. Without it, and on ARM64 PCs, QEMU uses software emulation, which is much slower. Guestbay shows which accelerator each machine got.

QEMU has fallen back to software emulation. On an x64 PC, turn on Windows Hypervisor Platform: search the Start menu for “Turn Windows features on or off”, tick Windows Hypervisor Platform, and restart Windows. On an ARM64 PC, guests always run under software emulation.

From their publishers. Guestbay’s Images page has a guide for each, and the New VM templates link to them.

• Windows 11: the Disk Image (ISO) section of Microsoft’s Windows 11 download page; choose the multi-edition x64 ISO. Microsoft’s download link lasts 24 hours.
• Windows 10: Microsoft’s Windows 10 download page. On a Windows PC it offers a tool that makes the ISO; choose ISO file.
• macOS: an OpenCore image, Apple’s recovery image and Apple’s SMC key, which you provide.
• Linux: pick an image from the catalog on the Images page; it downloads from its publisher.

No. Guestbay includes no operating systems. Each system’s own licence applies, including Apple’s macOS licence.

No. Windows gets a SATA disk and an Intel network card, which it has drivers for, and an unattended install adds the VirtIO drivers at first logon. For more speed, switch the disk and network to VirtIO under Hardware afterwards.

Guestbay installs Windows 11 with the TPM check bypassed, because QEMU on Windows has no TPM support. Windows runs normally; features that need a TPM aren’t available in the guest.

Wait a moment: Guestbay opens Setup’s command prompt and starts the classic installer. Setup in Windows 11 24H2 and later ignores an answer file on a CD; the classic installer reads it. Guestbay stops typing once the install is under way.

Choose VMware vmxnet3 under Hardware › Network. macOS has its own driver for it, in Recovery too, and new macOS machines get it by default. If it’s still offline, try another OpenCore image.

No. Close the window and Guestbay waits in the tray. Each machine runs as its own QEMU process, so it keeps going even if you quit Guestbay, which reconnects when it starts again.

In %USERPROFILE%\Guestbay, the Guestbay folder in your user folder. Each machine is a folder with its settings (vm.json), disks and logs. To keep them on another drive, set the GUESTBAY_HOME environment variable to another folder.

Relaunch it; Guestbay spots this and offers to. It’s a known Windows Hypervisor Platform problem: after a guest reboots, QEMU can stay paused, and only a relaunch fixes it. To relaunch automatically, change the setting under Hardware › Behaviour.

Use 127.0.0.1, not localhost. On Windows, localhost can mean IPv6, which QEMU’s networking doesn’t serve.

Yes. In Settings › LAN access, turn on Allow access from other devices and set a password. Other devices then open Guestbay in a browser over HTTPS, at guestbay.local or the addresses listed there.

The first visit warns about a self-signed certificate: check that the fingerprint matches the one in Settings, then continue. If other devices can’t connect, use Allow other devices in the same section to add the firewall rule.

Shut your machines down, then uninstall Guestbay from Settings › Apps. QEMU goes with it. Your machines stay in the Guestbay folder in your user folder until you delete it.