1. Download required software (all free):
Windows 8 CP ISO (64-bit English version) http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/iso
Windows 8 CP Product Key: DNJXJ-7XBW8-2378T-X22TX-BKG7J
Visual Studio 2011 Ultimate Beta ISO http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/11/en-us/downloads#ultimate
VMWare Player http://downloads.vmware.com/d/info/desktop_end_user_computing/vmware_player/4_0
I also tried the Oracle Virtual Box. Everything is okay (latest Virtual Box even has the Windows 8 OS in the option list), except the screen resolution setting is not desired. VMWare Player 4.0.2 recognized the video card properly and I simply turned the screen size to 1366x768 without any tweaking.
2. Install VMWare player and then reboot the laptop as prompted.
3. Open VMWare player, from File menu click Create a New Virtual Machine…In New Virtual Machine Wizard select I will install the operating system later option.
4. Select Windows 7 x64 as Guest Operating System.
5. Select a meaningful name for the VM and its installation location.
6. Choose a VM disk size (default 60G) and select Store virtual disk as a single file.
7. Click Customize Hardware button to configure more memory such as 4G and more CPU resources such as 2 CPUs; in CD/DVD option make sure to use downloaded Windows 8 ISO file. Leave other option unchanged and click finish (you can disconnect printer, sound card here).
8. Highlight the newly added VM in VMWare player window, and click Play virtual machine to start the VM instance.
9. The virtual machine will start to install the Windows 8 from the DVD mounted in step 7. You will see a dummy fish all around during the installation. Anybody could tell the story about that dummy fish?
10. Follow the Windows 8 setup wizard to complete the installation. It took less than 10 minutes to finish in a laptop (Intel i5 with 8G memory). One tip is to select "Don't want to sign in with a Windows account" and setup a local account to sign in the new system, which is preferable for a dev VM. Below is the Windows 8 Metro-style welcome screen:
11. Mount and Install Visual Studio 11 Beat. In the Virtual Machine Setting, under CD/DVD option, select "Use ISO image file" and pick the downloaded Visual Studio 11 Beta ISO file. Click Okay then you will be able to see the Visual Studio Installer from the DVD drive (desktop mode) inside the VM. Just click the installer and all the rest is the same as VS2010 setup.
I got the error message of "You need a developer license to develop this style of app for Windows 8 Consumer preview..." when first ran the Visual Studio 11 Beta in the VM. The laptop was not connected to Internet during the Visual Studio setup and maybe that caused the issue. Simply signing in with a Microsoft account on the popup window you would be able to get a developer license (valid for one month). The developer license is free and it's per-machine basis.
Next step is play around the Metro UI and the new Windows RT...
