Make sure that you have enough resources and disk space on your PC for the virtual machine.Download an ISO image of Windows 8.1 Preview.If you do not already have VMware Player, download and install it on your PC.In the following illustrations the 64-bit English version is used. Windows 8.1 Preview can be obtained as an ISO image from the Microsoft download site. This article provides a detailed procedure for installing Windows 8.1 Preview as a virtual machine. It allows running a separate operating system as an isolated, separate system on a PC.
VMware Player is free for personal use and can be downloaded from VMware. Installing Windows 8.1 Preview in VMware Player
Testing this preview is most easily done in a virtual machine.
In fact, there are serious disadvantages to installing this preview in a regular Windows 8 PC: Upgrading to the final version of Windows 8.1 will require re-installing all settings, apps, and programs. Like other “previews”, this is prerelease software and is not intended as a normal upgrade. Microsoft has released Windows 8.1 Preview.
