How to Run Whatsapp on your Windows PC

Whatsapp, that uberpopular app for messaging, has always been limited to mobile devices.  There’s no official version of it for the PC yet (and there might not be in the future, given the need of a unique mobile number for it work) but there are ways you can make it work on your PC.  There are a few ways you can do this – use an emulator like Bluestack or Youwave – but we’ll show you a different way to do this and without much hassle.  We’ll show you a way to do this the easy way with VirtualBox, which will also give you a fully functioning Android virtual machine for you to play around with on your PC.

I.  Necessary Downloads

1.  VirtualBox (choose the correct version for the operating system currently running on your PC)

2.  android-x86-4.4-RC2.iso (or latest version available)

3.  Whatsapp apk

I.  Installing VirtualBox and Setting It Up

1.  Install VirtualBox.

2.  Once installed, open up the VirtualBox application (you can do this by going to Start Menu > All Programs > Oracle VM VirtualBox and clicking on Oracle VM VirtualBox).

3.  On VirtualBox, click on the New button.

4.  Under name, type in Whatsapp (you can name it anything else too, but naming it Whatsapp is the sensible thing to do).

5.  Select Linux from the Type drop-down menu.

6.  Select Other Linux (32 bit) from the Version drop-down menu.

7.  Click on Next.

8.  For memory size, you could set it up to 1024MB which should be enough to run a fast enough virtual Android 4.4 environment (although you could allocate much more, depending on the amount of memory you actually have installed on your PC).

9.  On the Hard Drive menu, click on Create a virtual hard drive now, then click on Create.

10.   Click Next on the Hard drive file type menu and the Storage on physical hard drive menu.

11.  Leave the slide bar set at 8GB since this should be more than enough for an Android device on the File and location size menu, then Click on Create.

II.  Installing Android on VirtualBox

1.  On VirtualBox, you should now see the Whatsapp VM in the powered off mode.  Click on Start to run the virtual machine.

2.  On the next screen, navigate to the location of android-x86-4.4-RC2.iso that you downloaded above and click on Start.

3.  Use the arrow keys to select ‘Install Android-x86 to harddisk’.

4.  Select Create/Modify Partitions and hit enter.

5.  On the consecutive screens, select New, then Primary, then Write, and type in “Yes” to write partition to hard disk.  Once the partition is complete, select Quit.

6.   On the next screen, select the newly created partition and select ext3 for the formatting options.

7.  Keep selecting yes for the consecutive screens until you see this.

8.  Select Reboot.

9.  When it is rebooting, click on Devices > CD/DVD Devices > and untick the android-x86-4.4-RC2.iso listed there.

10.  Reboot the VM again by going to the Machine menu and clicking on Reset.  You should now see the default Android boot logo.  Also, click on Machine and click on Disable Mouse Integration.

11.  Set it up as you would any Android device initially using the keyboard and the mouse.

III.  Installing Whatsapp

1.  Open up Settings > Security and enable installation of apps from Unknown sources.

2.  Download the Whatsapp application installer from here and install it.

3.  Run Whatsapp and when you get to the screen to enter your cell phone number, enter your current phone number.

4.  You should get a call with the code; enter the code in for verification.

5.  Click on continue on the next screen.

And you have Whatsapp on your PC!