Navarus: Late Night Posts

With the recent release of Microsoft’s future Windows 7 (codenamed Blackcomb and Vienna) beta, some people might not want to go through the process of formatting a computer or have an extra computer lying around for testing purposes. The easiest solution at the moment is to install Windows 7 inside a virtual machine.

One of the best developers of virtual machines is VMware, in particular if all you want is a quick and simple way to install (any) operating system is to try using VMware Player (which is free!). Unfortunately you cannot create virtual machines directly from inside VMware player (you would need something paid like VMware Workstation to do that).

Here’s a quick guide to start running Windows 7 (or any OS) using only VMware player and some simple online tools.

1. Download the operating system: to download Windows 7, visit the official Microsoft page at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/ and look for the “Download the Windows 7 Beta” at the top navigation bar. It’s an iso image of over 2GBs (might take a while depending on your connection). You might need a Windows Live ID account (an activation key is also given).
2. Download VMware Player: to get the player visit the VMware Player page. You may be asked to enter some details about yourself before being able to actually download the player.
3. Install VMware Player: you might need to restart your computer to complete the installation process.
4. Create the virtual machine: remember that VMware Player is unable to create them. There is a pretty nifty site that creates VMs for you called EasyVMX. For starters: use the “Super Simple” VM creator.
5. VM settings in “Super Simple” creator that worked for me were: “Virtual Machine Operating System: Windows Vista”, “Memory Size: 1024MB”, “Virtual Machine Disk Size: 10GB” (you need at least 5GB to install Windows 7). Click on “Create Virtual Machine” at the bottom and extract the files somewhere.
6. Burn or mount the Windows 7 iso: Either burn the iso to a DVD or mount it using a drive emulator (I like DAEMON Tools). It appears to be much simpler! On the EasyVMX virtual machine creator tick the “Live-CD ISO-Image” box at the bottom and enter the file name of the .iso. It’s easier to keep the iso file inside the extracted directory (otherwise enter the path of the iso). Big thanks to pal for this tip!
7. Start the virtual machine: go to those files you extracted. Double click on the file that has the description: “VMware virtual machine configuration”.
8. Install Windows 7: this will look like almost any Windows installation, agreements bla bla, etc… Choose to install Windows 7 NOT the upgrade option.
9. Let the installation finish: you will be asked to enter the activation key (not required, but you will need to activate it after 30 days if you do not enter it now), location, networking etc…
10. Enjoy (or hate) Windows 7!

PS: Microsoft said that something like 2.5 million downloads/keys (or something) will be given out, so get it while you still can!