You now have Windows 10 Technical Preview installed.īefore we install Windows 10 Technical Preview, we need to install Hyper-V, a free hardware virtualization tool included in Windows 8.1.

Then proceed to install Windows as normal.

You will be prompted to select a start-up disk, so point it at the Windows 10 Technical Preview ISO file that you downloaded earlier and click Start.

Allocate approximately 50 GB for the virtual machine.

Choose Fixed size for better performance or Dynamically allocated to save disk space.

Choose Create a virtual hard drive now and click Create. Select VDI as the format.Allocate at least 2048 MB (2 GB) of system memory.Enter a name for the virtual machine and ensure that Type and Version are set to Microsoft Windows and Windows 8.1 (32bit or 64bit) respectively.Aside from the installation directory, no custom settings should be required. When prompted, agree to the driver installations. Open the VirtualBox installation file and proceed through installation.Virtual Box Method (Windows 7 and Windows 8) Windows 8.1 users will not need VirtualBox as it has Hyper-V. However, you will need quite a bit of free disk space and a sizable amount of RAM to proceed. Oracle VM VirtualBox (Windows 7 only) – A free download from Oracle that requires only x86 hardware. Project key included for free-all legal of course. Windows 10 Technical Preview – Available for free from Microsoft in both x86 and 圆4 formats.

Before we get started however, be aware that a relatively high-performance system with at least 8 GB of system memory is recommended.

However, one complaint we’ve heard is that people don’t want to do fresh installs just to try a Technical Preview build of an operating system.īut what if a fresh install were not needed? What if all it took to try Windows 10 was approximately an hour of your time? With hardware virtualization, it can be that easy. To persuade those out there that were on the fence, Microsoft released a free Technical Preview build on Windows 10 for them to try. For many, the promise of a free migration from Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 will be enough of an impetus to go to Windows 10. We’ve discussed Windows 10 on the blog previously, particularly noting how it will be available for free to Windows 7 and 8 owners in first year of release.

How to use virtualbox on windows 8.1