[Guide] Installing Windows 8 Customer Preview on Oracle VirtualBox

  11:56 AM    Santosh

Microsoft yesterday launched the Windows 8 Consumer Preview for x86 PCs during Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. And as with all moves to capture the tech industry’s attention, timing is everything. There is huge difference in Windows developer preview and Customer preview. As per Micrososft they have changed more than 100,000 lines of code for Customer preview.
[Guide] Installing Windows 8 Customer Preview on VMware Workstation 8
As with any pre-release software, Microsoft cautions that users may encounter bugs and incompatibilities. Recommended specs, as provided by Steven Sinofsky, Microsoft's President of Windows and Windows Live, are as follows:


1 GHz or faster processor
1 GB RAM (32-bit) or 2 GB RAM (64-bit)
16 GB available hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)
DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver


The Windows 8 Customer preview is currently available as a free download at preview.windows.com


You can test & get a view of Windows 8 customer preview on your machines by using free VirtualBox. Below steps covers step by step process to successfully install the Windows 8 customer preview on VirtualBox. 


1. First you need to download & install VirtualBox 4.1.8.
2 . Download Windows 8 Customer Preview ISO


Open VirtualBox & click on NEW.

Enter Virtual Machine Name & Click Next.

Assign it a 4GB of RAM (more or less as per you)

Select “Create new hard disk” and make sure “Start-up Disk” is checked

select the native “VDI” format for VirtualBox

Select “Dynamically allocated” option & click next

Give it enough hard drive space for your own needs,

Create the new Virtual Disk. 

And Go ahead power on the new VM.

Click “next”

Specify ISO location & Click “next”

Click on Start to power On the VM.

Follow below steps to install Windows 8.




And here you are..