I was disappointed to find out that you can't run the developer preview of Windows 8 using Microsoft Virtual PC. But after reading several success stories about installing Windows 8 on Oracle's VirtualBox VM I decided to give it a try using this walk-through. During my first attempts I was greeted with this cryptic error message each time:
Basically, the fix is to make sure to check "Use host I/O cache" under Admin...Storage...(highlight SATA Controller):
Once I changed this setting Windows 8 installed just fine, and the "Expanding Windows Files..." step of the installation took about 1 minute, compared to 15-20 minutes during the failed installations.
"Windows cannot install the required files. Make sure all of the files required for installation are available, and restart the installation. Error code: 0x8007045D".
This error would appear during the second step in the Windows 8 installation process, right after "Expanding Windows Files..." hit about 80%.
After researching VirtualBox settings, I found that the first English comment on the bottom of this post resolved my issue. (So it's worked for at least two people now).
Basically, the fix is to make sure to check "Use host I/O cache" under Admin...Storage...(highlight SATA Controller):
