FreeSurfer may be run on Windows (or any platform) via the VirtualBox application. For a Windows install, You should first install Virtualbox application on your Windows system, downloaded from here: http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads Choose the 'x86' download for Windows. Once the .vdi file is downloaded, use the VirtualBox Wizard to select the .vdi file as the 'hard disk image'. Select as much memory as you can dedicate to the image (2GB or more). Upon successful installation, the VirtualBox should open an Xubuntu instance and automatically login. Try and open a terminal and run commands such as: tksurfer bert rh inflated -annotation aparc You may need to disable 3D graphics accelleration in the VirtualBox video configuration for tksurfer to work properly (on some systems, acceleration works, others, not). It is possible to configure the VirtualBox to allow access to a USB hard disk (which might store your subject data). To enable access, in the VirtualBox main window, click on the yellow 'gear' icon, then click on the USB option. Under 'Device Filters', click 'Add Empty', do this once for each USB port your likely to use with your virtual machine, then click OK. This will allow the USB pass-through of a device connected to the PC to reach the Ubuntu environment. Be sure to install the VirtualBoxUSB driver if prompted to do so. A correctly attached USB drive will appear under the /media folder in Ubuntu. To debug attachments, you can 'tail -f /var/log/messages' and look for USB related messages. Krish Subramaniam Nick Schmansky Thanks to Pedro Paulo Jr. for the first FreeSurfer VM.