How to run the Windows Phone Emulator without Windows 8 Pro?

Question

I am trying to run my application on the Windows Phone 8 emulator on my laptop running Windows 8.1. When I start the emulator, I get this message: The Windows Phone Emulator requires Hyper-V. Your PC is missing the following pre-requisites required to run Hyper-V: Windows 8 Professional (64-bit)

I am already paying Microsoft to publish Windows Phone apps, I already paid them for my phone, and for Surface which does have Windows 8 Pro. Is there any way to run the emulator on my development computer without paying them to upgrade to Windows 8 Pro? (or getting it by shadier methods)

I checked to see if Hyper-V was listed in Windows Features, and it was not.

Answer 1

You need Hyper-V to run Windows Phone 8 emulator images since they are exactly that - images. They are not emulators like Windows Phone 7 emulators and they are only available on SLAT supporting processors and in Windows 8 64-bit.

If you have Surface Pro, you can develop on it. I managed to do that. If you have the normal Surface (not the pro version), you cannot run your development environment on it.