Installation of Windows 8 Consumer Preview on Oracle's VirtualBox 4.1.8 for Windows

Below are a list of VM technologies that currently support Windows 8:

- Hyper-V in Windows 8 Developer Preview
- Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008 R2
- VMware Workstation 8.0.2 for Windows
- Oracle's VirtualBox 4.1.8 for Windows
- Parallels Workstation 6 for Windows
- Parallels Desktop 4 for Windows
- XenDesktop 5.5

My personal experience with Oracle's VirtualBox version 4.1.8 was smooth. I was able to install both "Windows 8" and "Windows 8 Server" without any problems.

Here are the steps I took for installing Windows 8 (Consumer Preview) on Oracle's VirtualBox 4.1.8 for Windows:

1) Download Orcale's Virtual Box host application from: https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads. After you download the product, go ahead and install it.

2) Download the Windows Server 8 (Consumer Preview) 64-bit ISO image file from: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/iso.

3) Create a directory named Win8ServerCP (or any other name you fancy) somewhere on your hard drive.
Remember this location as this is where we will later store the VM.

4) Start Oracle's VirtualBox

5) On the left side of the toolbar, click on the "New" button.

6) Click "Next" on the "Welcome to the New Virtual Machine Wizard!" dialog.

7) On the next "VM Name and OS Type" dialog, enter/choose the following:

Name:    Windows 8 64-bit Consumer Preview
Operating System:  Microsoft Windows
Version:   Windows 8 (64 bit)

Click "Next"

8) Click Next on the "Memory" dialog.

9) Click Next on the "Virtual Hard Disk" dialog.

10) On the "Welcome to the Virtual disk creation wizard" dialog accept the default file type "VDI (Virtual Disk Image)" and click Next.

11) Click Next on the "Virtual disk storage details" dialog.

12) On the "Virtual disk file location and size" dialog, click on the browse folder icon and navigate to the folder named Win8ServerCP created in step 1 above, then click Save.

Click Next to move on to the next dialog.

13) Click Create on the "Summary" window. It will take a while for the VM file to get created. Be patient.

14) In the left pane, double click on the virtual machine named "Windows 8 64-bit Consumer Preview".

15) Click Next on the "Welcome to the First Run Wizard!" window.

16) On the "Select Installation Media" window, click on the browse folder icon and select the downloaded ISO image file then click Next.

17) Click Start on the "Summary" window.

18) Complete the self-explanatory installation process of the operating system.