Written by Giles Middleton

Developing Windows 8 Phone Apps with VMWare 8.x

[Editor note – this is the first draft, feedback or additions appreciated, I was in a rush!]

This post is aimed at helping users who have VMWare 8.x install Windows 8 and get started with Windows Phone 8 development using the Simulator. Because the Simulator itself is a virtualized environment, you have to make a few tweaks.

Installing Windows 8

If you’re using VMWare Workstation 9.0, Windows 8 should be fully supported. I’ve not tried.
If you’re using VMWare 8, you have to have at least 8.0.4. I used 8.0.6.

  1. First Follow these instructions from Tom’s Hardware.
  2. Before you start the install, disable the floppy drive, or you will encounter this problem.
  3. Perform your Windows 8 install – I used the Pro version (good luck).
  4. When you’ve started the machine, re-enable the floppy otherwise you might not be able to install vmware tools. (See here).
  5. Install VMWare tools (you can now do drag and drop and easier resizing).

Install Visual Studio 2012

You may have to open D:\ and run setup64.exe
Installation of the product is pretty straight forward, just crack on. (Sorry if you’re a complete newbie!).

Installing the SDK

There maybe easier ways, but here’s how I did it.

  1. Start to create a new project in VS2012
  2. When chosing the project type, in the search box enter ‘phone’.
  3. You’ll see the windows phone 8.0 SDK.
  4. Click ‘Install Windows Phone SDK 8.0’ for C#
  5. Then click download windows phone SDK 8.0
  6. It takes you to a web page where you actually download the sdk
  7. You then have to close VS2012
  8. Yes, probably going to that web page to start with was a better plan 🙂

Enabling the Simulator

To allow VMWare to use the windows phone emulator and avoid “The Windows Phone Emulator wasn’t able to create the virtual machine: Generic failure” errors, add this to the VMX file when the VM is closed down.

hypervisor.cpuid.v0 = "FALSE"
vhv.enable = "TRUE"

(from http://windowsasusual.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/how-to-launch-windows-phone-8-emulator.html)

If you want a great ‘getting started’ series of videos, I recommend this series at the Microsoft Virtual Academy, which also covers installation of the tools and writing your first apps.

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