Creating a VM with VMware Player

There are many tutorials on how to create a virtual machine in Windows to run other operating systems. You can see here an overview of hypervisors. This tutorial cover the basics on how to do so using VMware Player 6, particularly to create a Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and a Windows 8  VM in Windows 7. There are other tutorials on how to do the same using Oracle Virtual Box. Here is a Virtual Box Manual and a You-Tube video of creating a Windows 7 VM in OS X. In addition you can also see how to install Virtual Box in OS X, and then install Windows 8, at this Microsoft page.

  1. You can download VMware Player 6 from a link in its Web page.

  2. Once you download the VMware Player 6 install it as any other Windows application. Accept the creation of virtual network adapters as the installation asks you to do so.

  3. Double-click on the VMware Player 6 to open it and you will see what is shown in this image.

  4. To create a new VM click on Create a Virtual Machine and you will see a first dialog asking you to tell the source for the OS you want to install. In our example an ISO file that I downloaded to install Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (You can download it here for you PC. It could have been from a DVD or CD where you had the OS distribution. You can also download a copy of a  14.04 LTS VM for the  the Player  from this site. This is possible because Ubutu distributions are free,.

  5. Of course it could also be Windows 8.1  as in this example .You can download  a full version of Windows 8.1 as a student in this course from  Microsoft DreamSpark. Read these instructions on how to login and download software fromn DreamSpark. I suggest you use the Windows 8.1 32-bit even if your PC is 64-bit because it has a lower memory and hard drive requirements.  

  6. Click Next and you will be asked to select a guest OS (the OS you are creating the VM for), as shown here for Ubuntu and Windows 8, and click next. Give it a name, and choose a disk capacity (accept. generally, the defaults) and click next.

  7. You are ready to create your Virtual Machine. The Player shows a dialog for you to check your prior decisions are shown here. You have the option of changing the settings for the VM selecting Customizing Hardware. In the case of Ubuntu you do not need to changed the defaults.

  8. If you decide to create a Windows 8 VM you need to add some more memory to the VM. When you click on Customizing Hardware you see all you can change. Increase the memory to at least 1,500 MBytes (32-bit version),but the player will check your physical memory and tell you not to increase beyond a certain level, because memory swapping will be started.

  9. You have finished creating the VM when you click Finish, but the OS is not yet loaded from the ISO or CD/DVD source. If you need a more visual guide you can watch this You Tube video, too.

  10. After you click Finish you will be placed on the Player main screen again, with your new VM selected, powered off, and waiting for you to click on Play Virtual Machine. Please note that if you want to change the settings of the VM, you can do so by selecting Edit virtual machine settings.

  11. Click on Play the Virtual Machine and the Ubunto setup will start, VMware may ask you questions about adding devices, screen resolution, etc, ignore them, or click cancel, and you will see a Ubuntu symbol and a series of dots under it indicating the various steps in the basic setup, and then a dialog letting you select the installation mode. Select your language and Install Ubuntu 14.04

  12. You will need to answer questions about location, keyboard, and do not get scared -- in the prepare disk space choose Erase and use the entire disk -- this is the virtual disk you created before, not you whole disk drive, and click forward

  13. You will need to create a login for the VM and give a name to the VM and you will be place in a final ready to install screen with your choices and click on install. You are done!!!!!

  14. The process to create a Windows 8 VM is similar, you choose Windows 8 as the guest OS. Once you create the VM and Play the Virtual Machine, Windows 8 setup will start and you should choose Custom install to setup Windows 8 from scratch.

  15. You will be asked for the Product Key (that you also got from DreamSpark), your language and keyboard, and finally click install now. You will see a setup ckecklist, and finally the setup in progress. Of course when it finishes will ask you to restart, etc. You are done!!

  16. PS.: 1) When the VM tells you to restart the computer, is the VM computer, not your physical computer ... 2) If you mouse gets caught in the VM click Ctrl and Alt key together to release it. 3) To stop or restart the VM click on Player and select Power, of course you can also shutdown the VM in its shutdown button, both in Ubuntu and Windows 7.

This page is maintained by Al Bento who can be reached at abento@ubalt.edu. This page was updated on September 10, 2014. Although we will attempt to keep this information accurate, we can not guarantee the accuracy of the information provided.