Windows 8 Developer Preview VM

There was certainly no shortage of information and demo’s from the Build event. I think the best part of the conference was the release of the Windows 8 Developer Preview. Those that were there received a tablet with this already loaded but for those of us that weren’t, there was a task at hand that needed to be done and that was to load it ourselves. Unfortunately using Windows Virtual PC won’t work (reference KB article here). If you try you'll most likely see the following error:

Hopefully they’ll be a compatibility patch or update released for VPC but in the meantime, VirtualBox v4.1.2 will work as it has the ability to enable “IO APIC” which VPC does not. Network and sound will also work providing you select “Intel Pro/1000 MT Desktop” and “Intel HD Audio.” After booting from the supplied ISO, installing Windows and going through the preferences you should see the Start page:

Note: This is the 32 bit version and not the 64 bit version since I’m using another VM for my development/tools so YMMV.

If you want to boot directly from a VHD definitely check out Scott Hanselman’s blog post which has a great step by step guide which makes this an extremely easy process to complete. I’d be remised if I didn’t mention the official blog post on running the Windows 8 Developer Preview in a virtual environment.

There's definitely more to come so stay tuned...