Hey,
Yesturday i decided to install the different leaks of windows 8 in a virtual machine (since they wont install on my hard drive ) but its still mega slow even i allow up to 2GB RAM and the highest screen memory.

Any ideas on how to improve the virtual machines performance? Like turning off parts of the host machine or...?

Thanks,

What Virtualisation software are you using? It makes a big difference - Unfortunately, there's no Win8-friendly drivers for VirtualBox last time I checked, so Aero falls back to software rendering, which will always slow it down quite a lot. VMWare 8 Beta might be a better bet for Windows 8.

Use VMware 8 beta and give it more processor power i-e minimum of 2 cores

2 GBs is the minimum for 64-bit edition, which are 7959 and 7989 IIRC... So it's kinda low.

You can run Windows 8 on your real machine without installing Windows 8 directly in your HDD. Create a vhd and install Windows 8 in the vhd using any virtualisation software. Then install EasyBCD. Go to "Add New Entry" => "Portable/External Media", enter the name of the OS and choose the path of the vhd and click "Add Entry". Then you can choose which OS to start when you boot the computer. If it you want to delete it, go to "Edit Boot Menu" and delete the entry.

Link of EasyBCD:
http://neosmart.net/dl.php?id=1
Scroll down and download the free version.

You don't need to install it in a virtual machine. You can simply create and attach a VHD in Disk Management, then use ImageX to transfer the wim to it, and then use bcdedit or EasyBCD to add a boot entry.

Nice, thanks for the replies.
I'm trying neo's suggestion at the moment and ill let you know how i get on.
A question though, with the windows installer it would be possible to make it install snapshots of another system by installing a fresh copy of windows, install some programs or modify it, then just place it in the WIM and thats it? In that case, what would be the point of having to install it on boot and having all of the boot.wim and other files found in the setup CD?

It's not possible with vanilla Windows Installer. If you add ximage/imagex to a Windows PE disc (like a Windows Setup disc), then you can make a snapshot of the hard drive. You still need boot.wim to actually boot from CD though.

Ok but could you still do the snapshot thing if you replace the original contents of the Install.wim with the custom stuff
I've tried making my own little OS with a few light preinstalled programs and custom icons and themes like that. It was just the bigger programs that make registry changes i couldnt implement like microsoft office or serif drawplus

It should work, I think that's how some OEMs do their deployment these days.

Yeh it would make sense, its easier that way...

Sorryr for reviving my older thread now, but i was wondering if its possible to speed up loading vhds through easybcd. It is noticeably slower, would it be possible to stripe the disk or something?