How to Install Chrome OS on Windows Vista, Windows XP and Windows 7 Using VirtualBox or VMware

Posted by Abbas ||

November 21, 2009 ||

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Chrome OS was released for developers, just yesterday. Iit didn’t take too long for the uber techies to compile it and make it available for us to try the new OS.

Chrome OS is now installable using VMware (VMfusion for Mac) or Virtualbox for Windows/Mac/*nix flavors. My current setup is Windows Vista Home Premium and I’ll be running VirtualBox 3.0.12 for Windows hosts x86/amd64. There are two installation copies available at the moment one made available at Gdgt and the other one available on Torrents.

I downloaded both, worked with the install image available at Gdgt with no luck then tried the one from the Torrents which worked like a charm! Click here to download the copy available at Gdgt and here to download the copy from torrent.

Before you read too much into the whole Chrome OS thing, you should know that at this opint its nothing more than a browser, a Chrome browser. Even eventually it will remain just a browser but one that will be capable of doing a lot within a browser.

Alright, with that out of the way let’s jump right into installing the Chrome OS on Windows Vista VirtualBox. (Click here to download VirtualBox)

Step 1: Click on the “New” icon after running Virtualbox once it is installed [Screen1]

Step 2: Click “Next” on the “New Virtual Machine Wizard” [Screen2]

Step 3: Name the Virutal Machine and select the appropriate Operating System and Version from the dropdown [Screen3]

Step 4: Select the amount of memory you’d like to allocate to the Virtual Machine. Not less than 512MB’s and not more than 25% of the Memory available on the machine [Screen4]

Step 5: Select “Boot Hard Disk” checkbox and select “Use existing Hard-Disk” and click on the directory icon next to the drop down menu [Screen5]

Step 6: Click on the “Add” button on “Virtual Media Manager” window and brows and select the downloaded and unzipped Chrome OS file. [Screen6]

Step 7: Click on “Select” on the “Virtual Media Manager” [Screen7]

Step 8: Hit “Next” on the “Virtual Hard Drive” window [Screen8]

Step 9: Check the configuration and hit “Finish” to complete the setup [Screen9]

Step 10: Hit “Start” to launch the newly installed Chrome OS [Screen10]

You will see the login screen next. Use a Google account to login to the operating system and browse away using the new Google Chrome OS!

Following are few of the screenshots from the OS. As mentioned earlier, the new OS at this point it is nothign more than a browser and all you can do is browse websites once logged in.