Windows 8 Developer Preview came out a week ago, and many of us are trying to install Windows 8 in virtual environments like VMWare Workstations, Virtual PC, and Virtual Box etc.

While most of virtualization products have failed to install Windows 8 as guest OS. Microsoft explains, “Some virtualization products only provide a basic display driver that does not support the high performance graphics used in Windows 8. As a result, you get a noticeably slower, less responsive experience when compared with running the OS natively. The setup and configuration process can be complicated and error prone when running as a guest OS, especially if you are running it on older hardware that does not support built-in virtualization optimizations featured in the latest generations of Intel and AMD processors.”

Microsoft has just apologized for not giving guidance up front on testing the Windows 8 Developer Preview in virtual machines and shared a list of compatible virtual environments.

Functional:

• Hyper-V in Windows 8 Developer Preview
• Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008 R2
• VMware Workstation 8.0 for Windows
• VirtualBox 4.1.2 for Windows

Non-functional:

• Microsoft Virtual PC (all versions)
• Microsoft Virtual Server (all versions)
• Windows 7 XP Mode
• VMWare Workstation 7.x or older