VirtualBox - Install Windows 8

How to Install Windows 8 and 8.1 in VirtualBox​

   Information

This will show you how to install either the 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) version of Windows 8 and 8.1 in the free program VirtualBox.

For FAQs and more information about VirtualBox, see: End-user_documentation - VirtualBox

   Note

In order to run VirtualBox on your machine, you need:

• Reasonably powerful x86 hardware. Any recent Intel or AMD processor should do.
• Memory. Depending on what guest operating systems you want to run, you will need at least 512 MB of RAM (but probably more, and the more the better). Basically, you will need whatever your host operating system needs to run comfortably, plus the amount that the guest operating system needs. So, if you want to run Windows XP on Windows XP, you probably won't enjoy the experience much with less than 1 GB of RAM. If you want to try out Windows Vista in a guest, it will refuse to install if it is given less than 512 MB RAM, so you'll need that for the guest alone, plus the memory your operating system normally needs.
• Hard disk space. While VirtualBox itself is very lean (a typical installation will only need about 30 MB of hard disk space), the virtual machines will require fairly huge files on disk to represent their own hard disk storage. So, to install Windows XP, for example, you will need a file that will easily grow to several GB in size.
• A supported host operating system (your computer). Presently, VirtualBox supports Windows (XP and later), many Linux distributions, Mac OS X, Solaris and OpenSolaris.
• A supported guest operating system (virtual machine). Besides the user manual (see below), up-to-date information is available at "Status: Guest OSes".

   Warning

64-bit guests Requirements:
VirtualBox supports 64-bit guest (virtual machine) operating systems, even on 32-bit host (your computer) operating systems, provided that the following conditions below are met. See page 166 in manual.

• You need a 64-bit processor (CPU) with hardware virtualization support.
• You must enable hardware virtualization in your motherboard's BIOS settings.
• If you want to use 64-bit guest support on a 32-bit host operating system, you must also select a 64-bit operating system for the particular VM. Since supporting 64 bits on 32-bit hosts incurs additional overhead, VirtualBox only enables this support upon explicit request.

On 64-bit hosts (which typically come with hardware virtualization support), 64-bit guest operating systems are always supported regardless of settings, so you can simply install a 64-bit operating system in the guest.

Here's How:

1. If you have not already, then you will need the 32-bit or 64-bit Windows 8 or 8.1 ISO file version you want, and save it to your desktop (ex: Windows 7 or Vista).

2. If you have not already, download and install the latest version of VirtualBox (Windows hosts), download and install the VM VirtualBox Extension Pack (All platforms), then run VirtualBox. (see screenshot below)

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3. In the left side of the toolbar, click/tap on the New button. (see screenshot below)

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4. Click/tap on Next. (see screenshot below)

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5. Type in a name (ex: Windows 8) for the virtual machine, select Windows 8/8.1 if have a 32-bit ISO (step 1) or Windows 8/8.1 (64-bit) if you have a 64-bit ISO, then click/tap on Next. (see screenshots below)

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6. Select or type in how much of your computer's RAM (1024MB = 1GB) you would like for the virtual machine to use when it's running, then click/tap on Next. (see screenshot below)
NOTE: I would recommend to use at minimum 1GB. Ideally, 3GB for 32-bit and 4GB for 64-bit would be the sweet spot if you have plenty of RAM (ex: 8GB+) installed on your computer and can spare it to be used by the virtual machine.

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7. Click/tap on Next. (see screenshot below)

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8. Select (dot) VHD, and click/tap on Next. (see screenshot below)

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9. Select (dot) Dynamically allocated, and click/tap on Next. (see screenshot below)
NOTE: You could use either fixed or dynamic, but I would recommend using dynamic to help save HDD space.

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10. Select how large you would like the VHD file to be, and click/tap on Next. (see screenshot below)
NOTE: The default size is 20 GB, and is fine if you are not going to be installing a lot on the virtual machine. For 64-bit, you might use 25 GB instead since 64-bit uses a bit more space.

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11. Click/tap on Create. (see screenshot below)

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12. Click/tap on Create. (see screenshot below)

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13. In the left pane, double click/tap on the new virtual machine (ex: Windows 8). (see screenshot below)

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14. Click/tap on Next. (see screenshot below)

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15. Click/tap on the browse folder icon, select the downloaded ISO from step 1, click/tap on Open, and click/tap on Next. (see screenshots below)

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16. Click/tap on Start. (see screenshot below)

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17. Now, you will just need to finish installing Windows 8. (see screenshot below)

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18. When you are finished installing Windows 8, click/tap on Devices on the VirtualBox menu bar, and Install Guest Additions. (see screenshot below)

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19. When the new CD drive notification pops-up at the top right corner, click/tap on it to open AutoPlay. (see screenshot below)

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20. Click/tap on the Run VBoxWindowsAdditions.exe option. (see screenshot below)

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21. If prompted by UAC, then click/tap on Yes. (see screenshot below)

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22. Run the VBoxWindowsAdditions-amd64.exe (64-bit) or VBoxWindowsAdditions-x86.exe (32-bit) file that you selected in step 21 that is the same as the 32-bit or 64-bit Windows 8 ISO you are using, then click/tap on Next. (see screenshot below)

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23. Click/tap on Next. (see screenshot below)

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24. Click/tap on Install. (see screenshot below)

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25. When prompted twice, click/tap on Install each time. (see screenshot below)

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26. When finished, select (dot) Reboot now, and click/tap on Finish. (see screenshot below)

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That's it,
Shawn

Related Tutorials

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• How to Install Windows 8 and 8.1 on VMware Player
• How to Upgrade from Windows 8, Windows 7, Vista, or XP to Windows 8 or 8.1
• How to Download and Run "Windows 8 Upgrade Assistant" and "Windows 8.1 Upgrade Assistant"
• How to Create or Download a Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 ISO
• How to Do a Clean Install of Windows 8 or Windows 8.1
• How to Do a Clean Install with Windows 8 Upgrade
• How to Reset Windows 8 and 8.1
• How to Do a Dual Boot Installation with Windows 8 and Windows 7 or Vista
• How to Create a Windows 8 VHD at Boot to Dual Boot with Windows 7 or Vista
• How to Boot from a VHD using Windows 7 and Windows 8
• How to Speed Up Performance of a Virtual Machine

 

[kado897]

You can also create a shortcut to the VM. If you open VBox and right click on the VM entry there is a create shortcut selection. That way you don't even need to open the VBox to launch a VM.

 

[Brink]

The new VirtualBox 4.1.12 seems to work just fine with both the 32-bit and 64-bit Windows 8 (guests) on my 64-bit Windows 7 (host) as well.

 

[kado897]

That was interesting.

Attempting to install the new GA in normal mode caused W8 to collapse. It installed cleanly in safe mode however and the WDDM driver now works for me.

 

[vv211]

Hi Shawn,

First off, thank you for the tutorial. Very informative and thorough. However, when i try installing Windows 8, it gets as far as about 85% into the "Expanding Windows files" portion of the setup and then i get an error code and setup cancels.



Specs:
Host
Win7 Home Premium x64
8GB DDR3 RAM
Quad Core i7
Hardware Virtualization is ON

Guest
Win8 Consumer Preview x64
30GB VHD
4GB RAM
4 cores for the processor (execution cap 100%)


P.S.
Unrelated, but is there a way to import settings and profile info from our seven forums account? that would make setting our account up quite a bit easier

 

[Brink]

Hello vv211, and welcome to Eight Forums.

You could have either a corrupted ISO or VHD or both. I would recommend to delete the virtual machine and download a new copy of the ISO file, then start completely over to see if that may help.

If it fails again, then you might see how it does in VMware Player instead.

http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/2899-vmware-player-install-windows-8-a.html

 

[vv211]

Hello vv211, and welcome to Eight Forums.

You could have either a corrupted ISO or VHD or both. I would recommend to delete the virtual machine and download a new copy of the ISO file, then start completely over to see if that may help.

If it fails again, then you might see how it does in VMware Player instead.

http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/2899-vmware-player-install-windows-8-a.html

Thanks Shawn, I'll give that a try and let you know how it works out. It'll take a while to download though on my connection

 

[Brink]

You're welcome. Please let us know how it went.

 

[vv211]

FINALLY finished downloading. my parents turn off the internet every night, so almost every time i'd try to resume the next day it would fail.
got a download manager that didn't do that, so i'll install now and let you know how it went

 

[vv211]

ok, now it gets past the installing features and the installing updates part, the VM reboots, and then it just stays as a plain blue screen.

 

[Brink]

Hello vv211,

Any change from your last post?

 

[vv211]

well, i closed out of the virtual machine during its blue screen state and opened it again later. It seemed to be going pretty well at first, it had the windows 8 loading screen, then it said it was getting the devices ready, but then it went to a black screen and i started to become quite disappointed with windows 8. after leaving it that way for a few minutes it started me through the personalization process
everything has worked flawlessly since

 

[Brink]

That's great news. I'm happy to hear it's working great for you. Virtual machines can be slow sometimes.

 

[ryo]

shawn,
i tried install Vbox, andcurrently i running win7 32bit as host, and i have iso file with win8 64bit.
but when i attach the system to vbox, got error that's the 64bit couldn't be load because my pc doesn't have 64bit processor???
how to check that's my system got 64bit processor or not?

 

[Brink]

Hello Ryo,

If this is for your Phenom II AMD Dragon 3.5Ghz, then it shows it as being a 64-bit CPU. You might double check you BIOS settings to make sure that you have 64-bit and Virtualization (AMD-V) enabled.

AMD Phenom

Hope this helps.

 

[Hopachi]

Hi Ryo,

You can best check in BIOS for what Shawn suggested.

According to the VirtualBox User Manual (Chapter 3. Configuring virtual machines) some CPU's are not well supported and crashes may occur. The I/O APIC feature in the VM settings is recommended to be enabled to increase performance.

If you're lucky, it might work.
If there are still some issues (not working) then I'm afraid only a 64bit OS for 64bit VM works optimal.

Regards
Hopachi

 

[ryo]

hi all,
ok i will give a try first...and post back the result...
thanks.

 

[ryo]

hi, i just check my system info. and support 64 bit.

but when i tried to install win8 at vbox got error like this.


sorry for didn't update my spec desktop.

 

[ryo]

i get it works now.. but using vmware...

 

[Brink]

That's great news Ryo. I prefer using VMware myself.

http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/2899-vmware-player-install-windows-8-a.html

 

[ryo]

yah.. i'm using old vmware before.. that's why can't install windows 8. now upgrading the vmware already. but i have to install one by one. because i'm running 5 vmware for windows server.
thanks for your help.