Create virtual machine

The first step to create a virtual machine is to click on the New button in the top left hand corner of the VirtualBox Manager window. This starts the New Virtual Machine Wizard which will walk you through the steps required to get a new virtual machine up:

VirtualBox Manager

Next, enter the name of the virtual machine. What you call it is entirely up to you. VirtualBox will try to figure out what OS version you plan to run on the VM based on what you name it. If the name of the VM has Win 7 in it somewhere it assumes that you will be installing Windows 7 and will adjust itself accordingly:

VirtualBox machine name

Next, you’ll be asked to select the amount of RAM that you want to allocate to the virtual machine:

VirtualBox Virtual Machine memory size

Next, you must specify a virtual hard disk for your VM.

There are multiple ways in which VirtualBox can provide hard disk space to a VM, but the most common way is to use a large image file on your real hard disk, whose contents VirtualBox presents to your VM as if it were a complete hard disk. This file represents an entire hard disk then, so you can even copy it to another host and use it with another VirtualBox installation:

Virtual Machine hard drive

Select VDI hard drive type and click Next:

VDI hard drive

In this example we will be using dynamic disks, but fixed disks will work just as well:

Next, type the name of the new virtual hard drive file or select a different folder to create the file in and click Create:

Virtual Machine folder

That’s it. Now we need to install the guest OS.

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