What you should consider prior to virtualization?
Virtualization is not the optimum solution for testing Windows 8 but at least you get first-hand experience using Windows 8. Windows 8 operating system has been designed for speed and smoothness however; virtualization will not provide optimal performance.
Windows 8 supports touch screen interface that you will not be able to leverage on a virtual machine installation.
We can use other virtualization software like VMware however; web reports indicate that Windows 8 runs optimally on Virtual Box compared to VMware. VMware 3.x is not optimized for running Windows 8; VMware 4.0 can run Windows 8 with the same performance as Virtual Box however, you will need Workstation 8 for that.
It will just take you a few minutes to get Windows 8 running if you follow the steps below.
Running on Virtual Box
- To run Windows 8 on Virtual Box, follow the steps given below:
- First, download the latest version of Virtual Box and Windows 8. Enable virtualization on your BIOS by accessing the BIOS menu.
- Create a new virtual machine after starting Virtual Box and select the type as Windows/Windows 7. Since you are about to install Windows 8, it requires 20 GB of space. Create a virtual disk that can meet the minimum space requirements. Windows 8 will run more optimized on a solid-state drive if it is selected as virtual disk.
- Once the virtual OS has been created, access the Settings to start installation.
- Enable IOAPIC in the motherboard settings and change the chipset to IPH9. In addition, enable PAE/NX in processor, set the video memory as 128MB, and enable 2D and 3D acceleration. Go to System and select VT-x/AMD-v and Nested Paging.
- The virtual drive will be listed with a .vdi extension. Select the drive under Storage. Click host I/O cache and do not forget to mount your Windows 8 Developer Preview. Move to ICH6 IDE controller in case you used an IDE.
- Start the virtual machine and install Windows 8 by choosing the appropriate options. The installation process is analogous to installing previous versions of Windows.
