B# .NET Blog

For those of you who are part of the Windows Vista Beta 1 program, here are some setup instructions if you want to give Vista a first try on Virtual PC 2004. I assume you do have the .iso file (2.42 GB in size), e.g. from the MSDN Subscribers website.

1. Download and unzip the VCD ISO tool to mount the .iso file to a drive letter on the host operating system. Read the readme.txt file for instructions on how to use it. Assume the mounted drive letter is Z:.
2. Start Virtual PC 2004 and create a new virtual machine with a new virtual harddisk. I'm creating a virtual machine with 512 MB of RAM and a harddisk (dynamically expanding) of 120 GB (converted 122880 MB).
3. Now launch your virtual machine and choose CD, Use Physical Drive Z:. The reason for this hook in step 1 and 3 is the fact that Virtual PC didn't accept the iso over here (likely because it's too large).
4. After the BIOS' POST phase, you should see the Longhorn PE coming up (mini version on Windows Vista core to execute the setup in). PE stands for Preinstallation Environment.
5. Click through the setup till you reach the page where the installation partition can be chosen (pass through the product key entry, EULA accept and installation type choice). You'll see the following message: The partition you selected is not available for installation. Please reboot your computer and verify that the disk is enabled in your computer's BIOS settings. You can click next and the disk is marked as "Unavailable". Perform the following steps:
   1. Click 'New' to create a new partition on the virtual harddisk. Choose the maximum size available (that's the full disk space). (Alternatively use diskpart through step 5.2, see below).
   2. Press SHIFT-F10 to enter the command line (key combination available in Windows setups since Windows 2000 if I'm not mistaken; I've used it at least on XP and 2003 before). Note: do not use the "host key" SHIFT key (typically the right-hand size one).
   3. Execute format c: /fs:ntfs /q to perform a quick NTFS format of the volume. Note: for the ':' symbol, use ALT-58 if you don't have the right keyboard layout; use ALT-47 for the '/' symbol.
   4. Reboot the machine (try the shutdown /r command or do a hard reset).
   5. Possibly you can receive a BSoD for ntfs.sys when launching setup again; rebooting should fix this issue. (Yes, BSoDs are still present in Vista ;-))
6. Next time you reach the installation partition choice step, the message mentioned in the previous step should be gone and you should be able to proceed.

More information about this known problem can be found in the readme.txt file on the DVD, which can be opened in the first setup step (in Notepad).