Even though Microsoft recommends to install Windows 8 Consumer Preview on a physical machine, many people only have one computer, the one they use everyday for work, email, browsing, banking, etc., and installing a pre-release operating system in a primary machine is not a wise idea — if you have a spare machine lying around in the house, go ahead with that option and follow these instructions to successfully complete the Windows Setup, but if you don’t have it, do not risk it. One solution for these users will be using a virtual machine, and you can use VMware Workstation, you can also use VirtualBox (the one we are going to use today), which is a virtualization software from Oracle that works in the same way as VMware, or other type of virtualization solution. Now Consumer Preview is more stable that previous releases, so this time around it’ll be easier to create a virtual machine using VirtualBox that how it was in the past with Developer Preview.
Instructions
Before we start, you’ll need to download and install VirtualBox if you haven’t done so. When you done with this installation continue with the process:
Open VirtualBox, to create a new virtual machine, click New and in the welcome wizard, click Next.
In the VM Name and OS Type step: name your virtual machine with a descriptive name, and in the OS Type make sure that Operating System is on Microsoft Windows and the version to Windows 8. Then click Next.
Set the amount of memory to at least 1024MB and click Next.
In Virtual Hard Disk leave the default settings and click Next, a new dialog box (refer to the second image below) will appear, which will guide you in the creation of a virtual disk, select VDI (VirtualBox Disk IMage) and click Next.
Now in Virtual disk storage details, leave the default setting Dynamically allocated and click Next.
The next step is Virtual disk file location and size, there do just that: choose the location where to store the virtual machine — you may find that saving the virtual machine in another hard drive will boost performance — and don’t forget the name of the folder that will contain the VM. Windows 8 Consumer Preview requires a minimum of 16GB of free space for the 32-bit version, so to be safe set the disk size to 20GB, which is the minimum requirement for the 64-bit version, then click Next.
Then you’ll get a summary of your virtual machine in VirtualBox, click Create and Create one more time.
Select the VM that you just created, click Settings and navigate to Storage, under IDE Controller, select Empty, and on the right, click the CD icon to browse and locate the Windows 8 Consumer Preview ISO image, and click OK to finish with the settings customization.
Next start the virtual machine and if everything went according to plan, you will see the Windows Setup for Windows 8 Consumer Preview. If you need some help going through the Windows Setup head over to this article — Walkthrough Windows 8 Consumer Preview installation (Windows Setup) step-by-step.
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