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ARM Windows runs well with Parallels. And it can run x86 apps.

Yes, this is the best way to do it if possible in my experience. I use some fairly heavy x86_64 apps in the Arm for Windows in Parallels, using Windows’ translation system (rosetta 2 equivalent), and it’s been quite good.

Trying to emulate the whole x86_64 version of an OS (I tried some Docker images that only came in x86 before finding instructions to rebuild them on the ARM base OS) has been super slow on the other hand. This is on a quite decent M2 Pro.

Some x86 apps refuse to run on ARM, having platform detection built-in to their installer.

If it's an MSI-based installer, it's pretty easy to edit the MSI with Orca to remove the check. This is similar to how you'd get client software installs unblocked on Windows Server. In other cases, there are often ways to trick it, but it's contextual.

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