By the time we are writing this post, many of you must have already downloaded their copy of Windows 8. We also downloaded a copy of Windows 8 and installed it on our system. But since it’s a developer preview, there are plenty of things which are needed to be fixed. That’s why we installed it on virtual box on our Windows 7 machine.
How To Install Windows 8 Developer Preview on Virtual Box
To install Windows 8 you need to follow these steps:
- First of all you need to have a copy of Windows 8 Developer Preview. Also download a copy of Virtual Box.
- After downloading Virtual Box, install it. Once installed, you are ready to set up your virtual machine. Open Virtual Box and click on “New” present at top left corner below menu bar. Hit next once the setup wizard starts. You will be asked to fill in details.
- In the space given for version, select Windows 7 64 bit. No other Windows OS would work. After filling this, hit next.
- In the next window you will be asked how much RAM you would like to allocate to virtual box. Depending on the RAM size in your system, allocate the RAM.
- In the next step, a virtual hard drive space will be allocated for Windows 8. The default size is 20GB which is sufficient enough. There is no need to create a virtual drive or partition for installation as Virtual Box would take care of it.
- Further you will be asked whether to keep the newly formed drive as a Dynamic drive or Fixed Drive. We left it dynamic which means it can increase its size until it reaches its maximum allocated space. Press next to go further.
- After this, Windows will reconfirm the drive space.
- Once you press next a final confirmation will be asked stating whether you want to create mentioned virtual drives. Confirm it.
- After confirming Virtual Box will show a newly added machine. Now select that machine and then click on Start. This will boot the machine and will run the first setup wizard.
- To increase the performance you have to make few adjustments in Virtual Box. First of all, click on Machine. Now open its Settings.
- Select System in left pane. Now under the tab named Motherboard check Enable IO APIC to improve performance of your virtual machine.
- Under Processor tab, check Enable PAE/NX. You can also change number of processors involved. But this option will only work if host system supports hardware virtualization.
- Finally in Acceleration tab, check both option for Hardware Vrtualization i.e. VT-x/AMD-V and Nested Paging. Once done, click OK to continue with installation.
- Now you will be asked to select from where you would like to install Windows 8.
- Just like other Windows OS installation, click next to begin the Windows 8 setup wizard.
- Accept the license agreement. Further Windows will give two options; one for upgrade and other for custom install. Select Custom install.
- In next step, Windows will ask you to confirm the target destination where you would install Windows 8. The virtual hard drive you created would be the default option.
Windows 8 will carry further installation process. Wait till the process completes and enter the information when it asks. Congrats, this is how you installed Windows 8 on your system. Have fun testing it.
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