I was excited to try out what I saw in several posts—installing Windows 8 as a bootable VHD. Unfortunately, it would not work for me. The installer would just give me the message that the hard drive was not bootable.
So I opted for VMWare after a little searching showed that someone had that working. I did not have an ISO – I had the bootable USB key that I received at Microsoft’s BUILD conference. So that may be a little different from other experiences.
- Download VMWare 8.0 and run the installer.
- Create a virtual machine, and choose the option to install the operating system later.
- When given the option to choose an operating system, choose Windows 7.
- VMWare requires a license key to boot the virtual machine. After clicking the button to get the license key, one of the available options is a key for a 30 day free trial.
- Now the problem with the USB key. VMWare BIOS cannot boot from USB. So I downloaded a handy little boot manager from plop.at. Put in this ISO file as the CD/DVD drive for the virtual machine, and the boot manager takes over the boot sequence. Don’t forget to stare at the flying stars for a moment, and wonder how fast you are going through virtual space.
- Insert the USB key and attach it to the running virtual machine. Choose to boot from USB.
- The Windows 8 installer takes over from there.
P.S. Don’t install the VMWare tools. The result will be a black screen.