From Soup to Nuts: Using VirtualBox with Windows 8 Developer Preview

 

I am like everyone else when it comes to Preview OS Software. I don’t want it on installed on my primary machine and I don’t want to lug around another laptop to try stuff. I am not a fan of booting of VHD (which I will explain in a second). Scott Hanselman made a great post on how to do this if you are interested however. The main issue that I see with this approach is that the bootloader on my MAIN MACHINE is replaced with the Windows 8 Preview one. Yikes! I don’t want any preview software with that kind of control of my system. So, what did I do? I installed VirtualBox and then installed Windows 8 Developer Preview onto it. I captured almost every screen, so it may be helpful to even a beginner.

Let’s get started.

Update: If you want to use a adjust the resolution to something like 1920x1080x32 then follow Mister Goodcat’s tutorial located at http://www.pitorque.de/MisterGoodcat/post/Installing-Windows-8-Developer-Preview-in-a-virtual-machine.aspx.

Step 1

Before you download any software, go ahead and make sure you have Virtualization Technology turned on in your BIOS. Here is a great guide on how to do that.

Step 2

Install and download VirtualBox 4.1.2 or later (if it exist).

http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads

Go ahead and double click on the installer and go through the following screens:

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I left this page at the default settings.

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Same on this page.

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This next page will warn you that it will reset your Network Interfaces:

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..almost finished.

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And your done.

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Step 3

Now would be a great time to download the .ISO if you haven’t already. There are a couple of different versions of the .ISO. Since you are reading a developers blog then I would assume you want the one on the top that comes with the Developer Tools.

image

The other versions do not include the tools, but Microsoft has provided a x64 / x32 as well.

Step 4

Brett Stanley – http://www.objectsplus.net gave a great tip that I failed to mention: I wanted to add that in the First Run Wizard, Select Installation Media screen you can choose an .iso directly, negating the need to mount the image with another tool. :-)

or

Once that is downloaded, then you might want to go ahead and mount the .ISO using CloneDrive.

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The process is simple as it’s just a right click on Mount Drive then browser to the .ISO Image.

Step 5

Now it is time to setup VirualBox. Go ahead and run it and select “New”…

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On the OS Type, I selected Windows and Vista 64-bit as obviously VirtualBox does not support Windows 8 yet. Other people have commented that Windows 7 x64 works as well.

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The next screen is Memory. I actually have 8GB in this machine but wanted to see the performance of 512mb. I would recommend setting this to at least 1-2GB.

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For Hard Disk, I simply created a new one.

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I set this to VDI as I never plan on using this VM with other virtualization software.

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I opted for dynamically allocated because it will only use my physical hard drive if the VM requires it. (such as adding new programs, etc)

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For this next screen, you DO NOT want to make this around 10GB as the install will alert you it needs more space. 15GB is the minimum but I would recommend at least 20GB.

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After clicking Next, you will have a VM ready to use.

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Before we run the VM, go ahead and right click it to make a few adjustments to the settings.

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Go ahead and click on System and make sure you Extended Features looks like the following:

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Make sure the next tab called Processor has the following checkbox checked.

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On the last tab, called “Acceleration” Make sure it looks like the following:

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One last tweak is to enable 3D Acceleration on the Display Menu.

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Step 6 – Liftoff

We are finally ready to run our machine. Hit the Start button.

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You will get the following screen. You may want to read it if your not used to virtualization software.

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You should point it to the drive letter assigned to the .ISO image you mounted.

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After you hit “Start” it should start copying files over…

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Finish up with clicking next and the rest is as they say history.

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After it finishes installing, you can start enjoying Windows 8.

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Pro Tip: For those having troubles with Win 8 apps running in VirtualBox: Increase your screen resolution to at least 1024x768. Thanks to @ArielBH for the tip.

Links

Some keyboard shortcuts for Windows 8.



Windows 8 WinRT
Posted by: Michael Crump
Last revised: 05 Mar, 2012 10:25 PM

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