Guide to Installing and Booting Windows 8 Developer Preview off a VHD (Virtual Hard Disk)

Booting a Windows 8 VHD off a Windows 7 Primary System

Whew, now that's out of the way, let's void a few warranties, shall we?

Please note that there are a half dozen ways to do this. You can do it all from the command line using tools like ImageX, DISM, etc, or you can do a lot of it graphically with tools like BellaVista. This is just the way I did it. It's not gospel. I'm sure the folks in the comments will have much nicer ways. Take them all with a nice grain of sea salt. You can also SYSPREP the VHD directly from the ISO's WIM with IMAGEX if you know what that stuff means. It's a little subtle and requires you go get some tools. While my process  is a little baroque, it just needs the one ISO->USB tool.

Step 0 - Have a lot of Disk Space

I like to have a roomy VHD. You can make one that expands or you can make a fixed size. 40 gigs is usually enough, but I like 60 gigs as a nice round number, plus this is the Windows 8 Developer Preview with Developer Tools. If you don't have enough space when an expandable disk "bloats" itself to the fixed size on boot, it'll blue screen, so expandable or not, have the slack space.

Step 1 - Make a USB stick or DVD from the ISO

Go get the Windows 7 USB/DVD download tool and get yourself a USB stick that will hold at LEAST 10 gigs. I used a 16 gig one. Go through the process by pointing at the ISO you downloaded and then preparing your USB key. You can also use the resulting USB key to boot and install Windows 8 from your sacrificial hardware if you like.

Read more: Scott Hanselman Computer Zen
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