Frequently Asked Questions

These are the questions people genuinely send us, in roughly the order they send them. The answers are straight, because a joke site that lies about whether its download is safe is just a bad website.

What is Michaelsoft Binbows?

A loving forgery of a late-1990s operating system, and of the company that would have shipped it. The name comes from a real used-computer shop in Japan whose sign read "Michaelsoft Binbows" in the style of the Windows logo. Everything here is built around that joke: a website, a product line, and a disc image that actually boots. The full story is on the about page, with the photograph.

Is Binbows a real operating system?

It's a real, bootable disc image, and technically it is not an operating system at all — it is a single UEFI application that your firmware runs directly, with no kernel, no scheduler and no processes. It boots, it shows a splash, it crashes on purpose, and it gives you a command prompt that genuinely reads the disc you booted from. That's the whole promise. Treat it as a toy, not as a replacement for Windows, macOS or Linux — although if you did replace Linux with it, we'd want to hear how that went.

Is the download safe? Is it a virus?

It is not a virus. The disc image and the complete source are public on GitHub — about 1,600 lines of C you can read in an afternoon — and the download page lists a SHA-256 checksum so you can verify exactly what you got. It also has no writing commands at all: it opens the volume it booted from, reads it, and never touches anything else. Standard advice still applies and we still mean it: check the checksum, and try it in a virtual machine first.

How do I run Binbows?

Download the ISO, make a VM with 256 MB of RAM and no hard disk, switch the firmware type to EFI, attach the ISO to the virtual CD-ROM and boot. That EFI switch is the step everyone misses — despite the costume, this is not a legacy BIOS thing, and a VM set to BIOS will simply report no bootable medium. QEMU with OVMF, VMware, VirtualBox (System ▸ Enable EFI) and UTM all work. There's a step-by-step version with a QEMU one-liner on the download page.

Is this affiliated with Microsoft?

No, in every sense of no. Microsoft and Windows are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation, referenced here only to make clear what's being parodied. Nobody at Microsoft knows this site exists and we'd like to keep that arrangement.

Does it cost anything?

No. Free download, no account, no newsletter, no ads, no tracking, no cookie banner — because there are no cookies to consent to. Every "edition" on the product page is the same free file; the pricing table is part of the joke.

Can I run it on real hardware?

Yes, and this is the part that surprises people: it runs on the machine you already own. Write the ISO to a USB stick, turn Secure Boot off, boot from it. Any x86-64 PC or Intel Mac with UEFI firmware — so roughly anything from the last fifteen years. Nothing is installed and nothing is written to your disks. The one place it won't run is a genuine period-appropriate beige tower, because those have a legacy BIOS and no UEFI at all. If you do get it up on interesting hardware, send a photo. That's the best email we receive.

Why does the website look like that?

On purpose. Fixed-width table layout, beveled grey buttons, a scrolling ticker and a visitor counter — this is what a corporate website looked like in 1998 and we are being faithful about it. The one concession to the present: it reflows on phones, because a site nobody can read on a phone is a period-accurate mistake we've chosen not to make.

Can I use the Binbows logo and badges?

Yes. The logo, icon and the 88×31 buttons on the about page are free to reuse. Please host them yourself rather than hotlinking. It was rude in 1998 and time has not softened it.

Who made this?

lucya — one person, not a company, despite the entire corporate apparatus of this website suggesting otherwise. General post goes to [email protected], legal enquiries to [email protected], and bugs to the issue tracker. The full department directory is on the about page, and every address in it works.

Questions we get that aren't questions

• "I booted this on my school computer." That's not a question. We're not going to help. We're also not going to pretend we aren't a little impressed — and since it writes nothing, there is genuinely nothing to undo.
• "The bar on the splash screen isn't moving." Known issue BB-052, and not actually a bug: palette cycling needs an 8-bit bitmap.
• "Where is the Start menu on this website." There isn't one. We understand the confusion and we consider it a compliment.
• "Is the shop still open?" No, and the sign has come down too. The building is still standing, which is why somebody is flying out to photograph it. See the field trip.