Copy right from: Nirab Sarma
Windows 8 developer Preview is available for download for a couple of months and many of you may have already tried it out. There are a few methods to Dual-Boot windows 7 and windows 8 which will required you to Create a separate partition of your Hard Drive. But if you don’t want to play with your Hard drive then there is a very very simple and easy method available for you. In this method we will use a “Virtual Hard Disk” instead of a Hard disk partition to dual boot windows 8 with your current windows 7…
The first and most important thing you will need is the “Windows 8 Developer Preview” iso image. If you have not downloaded it till now, then you can get the iso image for free of cost from Windows Dev Center. The other tool you will need is a tool to mount the iso file. For this you can use Daemon Tools Lite. ( or simply you can Burn the iso image to a blank DVD) . After downloading these two most important tool, you can proceed to the actual tutorial.
Creating The Virtual Hard Drive ( VHD ) =
First of all we will create a VHD file where later on we will install our windows 8. To create a Virtual Hard Drive or VHD, we will have to open the “Disk Management” Console. To do so, press Win+R, and typediskmgmt.msc and hit enter. Your “Disk Management Console will be opened up. Now in the above toolbar click “Action” and from the drop-down menu select “Create VHD”.
In the pop-up window, first select the location of your VHD and then specify the size of the VHD. I will suggest you to select at least 20 GB space. Now click “OK” to create your VHD. Depending on your computer and size of your VHD, it will require some time. Once the disk is created it will be shown in the list of partitions in the Disk Management console. Now you have to initialize the disk by clicking on it and selecting initialize.
Select MBR ( Master Boot Record ) as the partition style and click ok. Now we need to create the actual volume on the partition. To do this, just right click on the black space and select “New Simple Volume”.
A “New Simple Volume wizard” will open, you can just accept all the defaults except two options, which you will have to change. The first option you will have to change is the assigned “Drive Letter”. In the drop down menu Select a Drive letter from the bottom of the list, such as “Y”. You can select any other letter, but in this tutorial I will use the letter “Y”. Now in the next screen, change the “Volume label” to “Windows 8”, then click next and finish. It will take a few seconds to format your newly created VHD, after that you will see your VHD as a regular hard drive in your windows explorer window. Now you can close your “Disk Management” window.
Installing Windows 8 On The VHD we have Just Created =
Before going to the actual procedure you will need to download a small file Install-WindowsImage.ps1( Right click and select “Save target as” ) and put that file at the Root Of the C: Drive. Now openPowerShell as an Administrator ( right-clicking and choosing Run as Administrator) from Start Menu->All Programs->Accessories->Windows PowerShell.
In the PowerShell window type Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned and hit enter. Now type “Y” and press enter to accept the security notice. Now type CD C:\ to switch to the root of the drive C.
Now use the Daemon tool to mount your WindowsDeveloperPreview iso file. Once you have mounted the .ISO image switch back to the PowerShell window and type the following commend.
.\Install-WindowsImage.ps1 –WIM G:\Sources\Install.wim –Apply –Index 1 –Destination Y:\
In the above commend, the Drive letters G and Y have to be replaced with your own drive letters. Where G is the drive letter of your Mounted DVD Drive and Y is the Drive letter of your VHD. Then press enter. If will take around 15 to 20 min to complete the process.
Once the process is complete then you will be notified.( You will se the Time Elapsed and Done message on the PowerShell window). After that you can close the PowerShell window.
Now open the Command Prompt with Administrator Privilege , and type bcdboot.exe Y:\Windows(where Y:\ is the windows 8 VHD we have created before).
That’s it. Now you can restart your windows and during the next boot, you will be greeted with a new boot screen. where you can select “Windows Developer Preview” to boot into your freshly installed windows 8.
