Give Windows Seven a try without spending a dime or formatting your hard drive. In this tutorial we will show you how to install and configure Windows 7 as a virtual machine using the free VMWare server. You can virtualize Windows Seven and run it as a virtual machine in VMWare server. Also check out how you can download a free tiral version of Windows Seven. VMWare server as you might be knowing is the free virtual server from VMWare. Virtualization of Windows Seven does not need any partitioning or formatting of your hard drive, nor will it effect any of your programs or operating system and yes the virtual machine will not create a nasty boot loader on your MBR either! You will be surprised how easy it is, and we will set this up in half the amount of systems requirements for Windows Seven

Our setup involved having to create a Windows Seven Professional Virtual machine, needing 8 GB of disk space and 512 MB of RAM. These specifications are half of what are required by an actual Windows Seven install, but the virtualization works perfectly without any problem. So lets get started!

Step1:
Go to your VMWare servers URL so we can start the setup, this is typically Start -> All Programs -> VMWare -> VMWareserver -> VMWareserver home page (by default http://yourservername:8333/ui/#) and log on (usually with your local administrator account on your VMWare server windows account)

Step2:
On VMWare server menu, click on Virtual Machine then Create Virtual Machine

Step3:
Give your Virtual machine a name and choose your Data store (in this case, Windows Severn Professional and we chose Datastore1), click Next

Step4:
For Guest Operating System, choose Windows Operating System and for Version, choose Microsoft Windows Server 32 bit, this is because Windows Seven is not available as a choice, however choosing Windows Server 2008 makes it the same as for using the VMWare tools compatibility and other features. Click Next

Step5:
For Memory choose 512 MB, although the recommended minimum for Windows 7 is 1 GB, Windows 7 will install and run fine on 512 MB for a basic install. This is good enough if you are going to use the Virtual Machine just for testing, the amount of RAM can always be increased later if needed. Keep the processor to be a single processor, click Next