With more than a million downloads of the Windows 8 Consumer Preview there must be some who want to use a virtual machine for getting some firsthand experience with Microsoft’s latest.

Installing Windows 8 into an existing virtual machine running Windows 7 or the Windows 8 Developer Preview is straightforward, quick, and uneventful.

VMware Player is a popular virtual machine, but even the latest update (Feb 2012 to version 4.0.2 build-591240) does not yet know about Windows 8, so installing Windows 8 as a new machine is a bit tricky. (read the whole story………..this is a very helpful write-up)