VirtualBox - Virtualisation made easy for everyone

Step 1
As we pointed out in the introduction, VirtualBox supports not only physical CD/DVD drives, but also virtual ones (like Daemon Tools and Alcohol 120%). Here, we won’t be using the DVD burner, instead exploiting the image manager. Go to the File menu and select Virtual Drive Support. From the Image Drive tab, click on the Add button to mount the Windows 7 disk image.

Step 2
Once back at the main menu, click on the green arrow to launch the virtual OS. When the installation media window is seen, you will have to precise that it is an image file (in ISO format). A summery of the operation will be then seen. If you have burned the Windows Seven DVD, you will of course need to instead insert the disk and state the drive letter.

Step 3
As planned, Windows Seven will start and you will find yourself looking at the classic installation. You simply need to continue as you normally would if this was a standard machine. To pass from the VirtualBox to your normal OS, you simply need to press your keyboards Host key, which is usually the “Right Control” key. To see the virtual machine in full screen, “CTRL + F” is the combination.

Step 4
During the Windows Seven installation you will notice that the unallocated drive space is 20GB. This corresponds to the size of the hard drive which we selected during the virtual machine creation phase. In this space, you can create a single partition or multiple partitions, depending on how you prefer to work. In our case, we will leave it as it is.

Step 5
Finally you will see your new operating system, which is Windows Seven. You can use this as if it were installed on its own machine, download applications for it, surf on the web, play the basic games, etc.