Right, so perhaps you are anxious to get a decent look at at the recent public release of Windows 8 and have had issues loading the ISO provided by Microsoft via VMware Player or Windows Virtual PC.
Chances are slim that Microsoft will provide an appliance for Windows 8, which would be optimal for most of the technical community. I’m sure if you look, there is probably some unsupported versions out there for download.
Nevertheless, lets look at the product, analyse the errors and correctly document how to fix them without having to resort to less desirable solutions. Oh and always keep in mind there is a good chance Microsoft is on the defense as it wants to provide a great computing platform that keeps up to industry expectations and competes in a market that is constantly evolving and expanding.
At first load, I bumped into an issue initializing with the Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL). Upon loading and booting from WindowsDeveloperPreview-32bit-English.iso via Microsoft Virtual PC, I quickly encountered the following error” “Your PC ran into a problem that it couldn’t handle, and now it needs to restart. You can search for the error online: HAL_INITIALIZATION_FAILED”. I then quickly tried the 64 bit developer preview and got the same error. Not much corrected the error – I even tried my VMware Player with no success.
After some research, here is how you can easily correct the initial HAL failure message with Windows 8:
- Note: my goal with this test is to stage the VM on a USB drive for easy transport, retrieval and testing.
- If you are interested in running 3 different virtualization products on your server or workstation, consider installing virtual box right next to your Microsoft Virtual Machines and your VMware products.
- Consider veering away from using a virtual entity to host your Windows 8. Install the OS to a newer desktop or laptop. If you don’t have the hardware, consider purchasing. To take full advantage of Windows 8 you will need to run the OS on decent Hardware, especially if you have plans on using it as a development platform. Plus its always good to have a decent video card capable of hardware acceleration.
- Don’t use PCoIP. At least not until the latter part of your POC.
