Windows Vista’s installation process is a bit more streamlined than Windows XP. In this video, you’ll learn how to install Windows Vista in a VirtualBox virtual machine.
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Before you do any major change to an operating system, you want to be sure that you have a backup. And that’s very important when you’re installing Windows Vista from an upgrade or whether you’re installing Windows Vista as a clean install.
We want to check our minimum requirements as well, make sure we have the proper amount of memory, the amount of hard drive size, and are free disk space on those hard drives. We also want to be sure that all of the hardware and software that we’re planning to use in Windows Vista is going to work properly. So it’s always good to run through the Upgrade Advisor to make sure that everything that you’ve installed and all of your hardware has drivers and works properly in the Windows Vista operating system.
You also want to keep in mind the file type that you’re planning to use. If you’re going to use this hard drive with many other operating systems, and you’ll need to share files between those operating systems, you may choose the FAT32 file system. Or you may choose the more capable NTFS file system, if you’re only going to run Windows on this computer.
When you’re considering the minimum hardware requirements for Windows Vista, we separate this into Windows Vista Home Basic and all of the other editions of Windows Vista– the Home Premium, the Ultimate, the Business, and the Enterprise.
If you’re running Windows Vista Home Basic, you need 800 megahertz processor with 512 megabytes of RAM at a minimum. You’ll need a 20 gig hard drive at a minimum that has at least 15 gig of space available. You’ll need a CD-ROM drive and a video adapter that has at least 32 megabytes of RAM on it. All of the other editions are Windows Vista require a minimum of a 1 gigahertz processor, one gigabyte of RAM available, at least a 40 gig hard drive, with again, 15 gig of free space available. We’ll need, again, a DVD Rom drive. And this graphics adapter needs to have at least 128 megabytes of graphics memory.
Let’s run through an installation of Windows Vista Business. Instead of using a physical computer, I’m going to go back to My Oracle Virtual Machine Virtual Box Manager. And we’re going to build a virtual environment that we’ll be able to install Windows Vista in.
I’m going to click our New option. I’m going to call this virtual machine the Hologram Room Device. It will be running Windows Vista, but it’s not running Windows XP. We’d like to choose Windows Vista. And it is the 32-bit version of Windows Vista, not the 64-bit version.
If you’re building your own virtual environment, make sure you choose the right one for you. Let’s click Continue. It asks the minimum at memory size that we’re going to use.
In our particular case, we’re going to be running Windows Vista Business. So we need to make sure that we have not just 512 megabytes of RAM. We need more than that. So I’m going to increase mine up to the bare minimum so 1,024 megabytes or 1 gigabyte of memory for this instance. We’re going to click Continue.
The hard drive has not been created. So we need to build a brand new hard drive. And remember, for Windows Vista Business, we need at least a 40 gig hard drive. Obviously, this will be an absolutely empty hard drive. So we will certainly have 15 gig available.
Let’s create a new one. I’m going to choose the default for the Virtual Box Disk Image. And then I’m going to create a fixed size for performance reasons to make sure that this is going to run as fast as possible.
And I will choose not the default of this 25 gig, but I’m just going to type in a 40 gig hard drive and click the Create. At this point, Virtual Box will build a 40 gig file on my hard drive. And that’s what will be the virtual hard drive for this particular installation.
Now that the basic configuration of this virtual machine has been created, I need to take the ISO file that I have for Windows Vista and use it in this Hologram Room virtual machine. I don’t have a physical DVD-Rom on my computer. If I did, I could simply use my Windows Vista DVD and put it into that slot. And this virtual machine would be able to use that.
I’m going to change the settings for this device. Go to the Storage option. Choose the empty DVD-Rom that I have here. I’m going to click the DVD-Rom icon and choose a virtual DVD disk file that’s on my hard drive.
On my machine, on my desktop, I have a Windows Vista that’s ready to go. We’re going to click the Open option and click OK. And now we’re ready to begin. To start the installation process, we click Start and our computer boots up.
We’re going to get a prop at the very beginning that tells us that Windows is loading files from that DVD-Rom. And now it’s going to begin the actual installation program. The first problem we get during the installation process is the language we’d like to install. This is an English DVD-Rom or ISO file for Windows Vista.
The time and currency format I can choose from any that are available. Mine is English and the United States. And the type of keyboard that I’m using is also a United States keyboard. And we will click Next.
At this point, it’s a very different front end in installing Windows XP. If you’ve gone through our Windows XP video, it’s a very text-base install. The Windows Vista installation has a lot more graphical displays to it.
We can choose to install now or we can go through a process of what we should know before installing Windows. Or if Windows is already installed and we would like to repair this Windows Vista installation, we could choose Repair Your Computer. This is a completely empty virtual drive we created, so we’ll choose the Install Now option.
Before you begin the installation of Windows Vista, you have to have the product key available. So make sure you look on the original package that you used for Windows Vista. Or if you downloaded it directly from Microsoft, you received a license key in your email. Simply add it to this prompt. And you have another check box that asks if you would like to automatically activate Windows once you come online to simplify that process.
We now received the Microsoft in-user license agreement and the software license terms. Make sure you read through all of those. If you accept the license terms, you can check box and click Next.
At this point, Windows gives us the option of performing upgrade. In this particular case, we booted from this media. There is no existing operating system. So we can’t perform an upgrade on this computer. We’re doing a brand new install of Windows Vista. And that’s the only option we’ll have available. Notice that even tells you that upgrade has been disabled.
Once we choose to do a new install, we have the option to determine how we would like to allocate space to use for Windows Vista. We can simply choose the one disk here with unallocated space, and Windows Vista will continue the installation with the defaults. Or we can choose Drive Options and set up a particular area of the drive just to use for Windows Vista.
We can format. We can delete. We can add new partitions to this and manually determine how big we would like those partitions to be.
Maybe we would like one 10 gig partition for the operating system and use all of the other available space as a completely separate logical drive on this computer. In my case, I like to use the entire allocated space. So will simply click the Next button.
At this point, Windows Vista begins copying files performing the installation process. And it may even reboot a number of times as it’s going through this process. We can simply sit back and let Windows Vista perform the install.
Now that Windows Vista has finished the main part of the insulation, we’re prompted for a user name. And in this case, Daniel Jackson it will be the user for this computer. He’ll need a password.
And there will need to be a password hint that you’ll need to put into this. Maybe it is a favorite color. And then choose a picture that you’d like to use for this user account.
Now we get to name this computer. We know that this is going to be the Hologram Room computer. And I’m going to make sure that I don’t put a space, or a dash, or anything that it doesn’t like.
You’ll notice the slashes, and brackets, and tildes can’t be used. If I wanted to have it look a little bit better, I could put a dash in the middle and even choose a desktop background. And of course, you can change these later if you’d like to. Let’s click Next.
We’re going to use the recommended settings for security for this Windows operating system. And I’m going to choose the time zone that I’d like to use. In this particular case, the time zone that we’re going to have configured in here is the mountain time zone in the United States. And we need to make sure our time settings look the way they should.
And now we choose where the location is of this device. Is it at home? Is it at work? Or is it a public location? And Windows will set different configurations for the security of this device, based on what you choose.
Well, this is a business machine, so I’m going to choose Work. And now we’re done. Windows Vista says thank you. And we can start the operating system.
During the first start up, Windows will check your computer performance and then go through a process of installing different file configurations. At this point, Windows Vista is finished. We can now log in with the prompt that we had previously. And we can start using the Windows Vista desktop.
Before we start using this computer in production, we need to make sure that this new version of an operating system is going to work properly with our hardware. So some initial testing should certainly be done. We also need to update the operating system itself. We need to make sure that it’s running the latest service packs, that we have all of the latest security patches that have been released since that service pack, and then make sure you’ve installed any security applications like anti-virus and anti-malware into the operating system.
There are probably drivers that need to be updated since the time they were put on the Windows Vista installation media. So it’d be a good idea download those from the manufacturer’s website and install them onto this computer. And of course, we’ll need some applications to use. So the final installation of apps and then we can turn this computer over to be used by our end users.