Testdrive Windows 8

It is always nice when there is a new version available from an operating system! I am currently using Windows 7 as primary OS on my development machine for Asp.Net development.

Disclaimer: Before you start, make sure that you have a Live ID and a powerful machine to run virtualization software!

I have downloaded this ISO from Microsoft.com:

Windows 8 Developer Preview with developer tools English, 64-bit (x64)

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/br229516

I have tried dual boot solutions several times. With Ubuntu, Fedora etc. But this time, I didn’t want to come near a boot loader. So my only option was virtually. Even though when I read a nice post about attaching a *.vhd file. My favorite and easiest virtualization software (Microsoft Virtual PC) didn’t want to run this ISO. So I had to use different virtualization software. I decided to go with VMware player. VMware player is free, it only requires a registration, but that is totally worth it! VMware has a lot of experience with virtualization software, but upgrading from 4.0 to 4.0.1 is really annoying, because of all the reboots. It took me a lot of time. (I have a 2,5 year old notebook) [more]

When you install Windows 8 in VMware you can get an error because it requires a product key. After searching the web for a while, I found a good workaround which is to disable the floppy disk reader in VMware.

Have fun testing Windows 8 with VMware!

A few screenshots: