How do I install Windows 7 within Windows 8?

In this excerpt from
Answercast #86, I look at Virtual Machine technology and how it allows you
to run multiple operating systems on one computer.

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Install Windows 7 within Windows 8

That’s exactly what a virtual machine is designed to do.

If you take a look at my article, “Virtual machines: what are they?” it will tell you what virtual machines are at a conceptual level. But, very simply, they are an entire machine within a window on your desktop.

So, what you would do is you would get virtual machine technology. I happen to use Parallels Desktop, but there are definitely others including VMware and a couple of others.

They will then allow you to create a “Virtual Machine” which would then start as if you were setting up a new PC from scratch — in a window.

So what that means is you would need your Windows 7 installation media and you would run Windows 7 set up in that virtual machine. After you’re done, on your Windows 8 machine, you would have a virtual machine running, in a window, that’s running Windows 7.

Or the other way around…

In my case, I happen to run Windows 7 on my machine. I have virtual machines that run: Windows 8, another copy of Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP and even Ubuntu – usually for researching various questions.

So it’s a wonderful technology. I encourage you to research it and look into it but it sounds like it solves exactly the problem that you’re asking about.

(Transcript lightly edited for readability.)