1

At home I have Windows 7 installed on my PC and I have VMWare player installed with Linux Ubuntu as the guest operating system. I want to install Windows 8 as another guest operating system. My PC can handle this.

How would I do this? Do I need to simply buy the .ISO version? I spoke to someone in PC World and they only sell the version that is installed as the host operating system.

1 Answer 1

0

Regular versions of Windows are licensed per machine and it doesn't matter if it's a physical PC or a VM. It doesn't matter if the software comes on a physical disk or as an ISO.

Windows 7 Enterprise was an exception and I believe it applies to Windows 8 Enterprise too:

Software Assurance customers using Windows 7 Enterprise may install up to four virtualized instances of Windows 7 Enterprise or Ultimate on the machine which has Windows 7 Enterprise installed. Other versions of Windows 7 do not allow for virtualized instances of Windows 7 to run without a separate license. (source)

Another exception is the DreamSpark license which applies to Windows copies available for free for college students. Those can be installed only on virtual machines or as an upgrade for physical PCs that already have licensed version of Windows installed.

5
  • What about the required bios verification? I wanted to install windows 8 in a VM to test it when it got out, and never got it running. I did some research about it, and it appeared that it was not possible in a VM because certain hardware in the bios was not emulated. I haven't tried since, so it may have changed.
    – LPChip
    Aug 3, 2014 at 21:43
  • I remember I had Windows 8 Release Preview running in VirtualBox. Only BIOS-related thing I could think of is the TPM chip (kind of hardware stash for crypto keys) of which Windows 8 can take advantage, but it's not required so everything should work smoothly. Windows XP Mode is locked to be runnable only on dedicated XP Mode VM, but it wouldn't make sense to lock regular Win8 in similar manner. I'll check if installing Win8 on a regular VM is possible.
    – gronostaj
    Aug 3, 2014 at 22:04
  • Ah yeah, TPM chip. That was what my error was. It said my pc didn't have it, and thus it wouldn't install windows 8. I did it in Oracle Virtual Box myself. Haven't tried since though. Am awaiting your results. :)
    – LPChip
    Aug 3, 2014 at 22:08
  • I have just successfully installed Windows 8 in a VirtualBox VM with default settings. I also have Windows 8.1 running on a 7 year old Vista-era PC which probably doesn't have TPM.
    – gronostaj
    Aug 4, 2014 at 7:21
  • Ah okay. Maybe it was something specific to that version of windows 8 that I tried to install. Thanks for the reply. :)
    – LPChip
    Aug 4, 2014 at 7:37

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .