Has anyone succeeded in installing the Windows 8 Experience in a Virtual Machine?
I am running W7 Ultimate 32-bit, so I downloaded the 32-bit version.
I already had Windows Virtual PC so I tried that first.
I got a pretty blue screen with the :-( smily saying 'HAL Ininitisation failure'.
Apparently, I am not alone in this. It just won't work with this product.
So I used VM Virtual Box. It got to the unpacking files section and hung at 19%. Crashed this tried again, it failed at 9%. Tried again, failed at 1%.
Cleaned out all the temp files, uninstalled, and reinstalled. Failed at 6%.
This is the Workstation 8 trial version.
Then tried System Central VMM. That said it was not compatible with the OS I was running.
I have a spare laptop, but I really don't want to wipe that if I can avoid it.
So just how can you run in without killing your OS?
I read recently that Win8 requires a secure UEFI (bios) to boot. If the VM doesn't emulate that, then you are out of luck most likely. The latest versions of some virtual machine managers may support that. VirtualBox does support UEFI, but I'm not sure about secure UEFI.
Ok. Apparently Win8 at this point (the preview versions) don't require secure UEFI since no hardware supports it as yet. However, it may well require UEFI instead of the old PC BIOS. If that is an installation option for your VMM, then try that, or try a VMM that supports UEFI, such as VirtualBox.
Excuse me, BUT I did say I was trying to use Virtual Box and it was failing on me.
Are there any other virtual machine software programs available, or am I going to have to do a 'real' install on a spare notebook I have available???????
Well, VBox allows you to set it to use a standard BIOS or UEFI. How is your VM configured? You need to go to the System->Motherboard settings and enable EFI.
Virtual Box worked fine for me...however it took 3 or 4 attempts to get it installed. Like you said it would keep hanging up at the 'unpacking files' section of the install. Just keep trying it will work eventually, and make sure you have nothing else open at the time of installation.
Regardless though, I found that the Windows 8 developer preview was extremely boring, so I removed it after about 10 minutes of playing around with it
System->Motherboard. I've never seen that option before. How do you access it? At boot time or something else?
It is in the VirtualBox setup screen. Select your VM, click on the System entry, and then select the Motherboard tab. One of the "Extended Features" check boxes should be "Enable EFI (special OSes only)".
Finally got it to install, don't quite know how. Just left it alone for ages, and when I looked it was showing the green 'enter user/password' screen.
Looks pretty enough, but it couldn't see my internet connection - cable 30Mb. Said I needed to install a driver - from where?
That limited a lot of what I could do. Any ideas how to get round that?
Incidentally EFI didn't work. That really screwed up any attempt to install the OS.
Finally got it to install, don't quite know how. Just left it alone for ages, and when I looked it was showing the green 'enter user/password' screen.
Looks pretty enough, but it couldn't see my internet connection - cable 30Mb. Said I needed to install a driver - from where?
That limited a lot of what I could do. Any ideas how to get round that?
Incidentally EFI didn't work. That really screwed up any attempt to install the OS.
what you would need is the driver for the network device/card in the computer ,thats usually found on the maker of you computers website .
Are there any other virtual machine software programs available
You may want to try VMWare next time. Its pretty easy to install and use.
Should have tried using VMWare Workstaion. Simple installation. Worked like a charm.
Didnt get to make network work in it though.
didn't get to make network work in it though.
checked it out ,it has a free 30 day trial,to buy its 200.00$ ,networking seems to be one of its main features ,how come it wouldn't work for you ,your answer might save me the time of downloading and playing around with it ,thanks
Installed fine for me in VirtualBox just now. Kinda slow though :X I'm still checking out things here.
One of the things Microsoft tried to do with Windows 8 is make a smoother start up, a quicker start up. They changed a bunch of things with the transition from bios firmware to windows software which makes me think that's is where your virtual box was having problems. I wish i could find the article which explained everything but it stated something to the sort of trying to make button push to desktop under 5 seconds for most computers.
Get a trial of VMWare Workstation 8, did that to try mine and worked perfectly. If you want a definite copy then buy VMWare
Don't attemp VMware Player, I couldn't get it to work at all, but Virtual box only worked when I set my host PC bios to allow Virtualization. I gave the VM 4GB of ram, and 1 entire processor core. Things still ran sluggish.
Win 7 Ultimate x64
14GB DDR3 1066
AMD Athlon II x3 (3.02GHz)
GeForce 240 1GB
1TB 7200rpm HDD
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