How to Install Chrome Os in a Virtual Machine with Virtual Box

Chrome OS – The new Operating system by Google can be installed in a Virtual machine. Here is a detailed guide on how to install Chrome OS on a virtual machine with Virtual box.

Note : Using Microsoft’s Virtual Pc to install Chrome OS will not work.

1. At first you will need a Virtual machine software. You can use Vmware Workstation or Virtual Box by Sun micro systems. We tried installing Chrome OS with Virtual box and it worked out well. Download Virtual box for your Operating system here.

2. Download the Chrome OS image from this torrent file.

3. Create a new Google account that you will use with Chromium OS. While this isn’t mandatory and you can use an existing Google account of yours. But just to be on the safe side, we used a new Google account.

4. You are ready for the installation. Start the Virtual machine software ( in this case it’s Virtual box) and you will be greeted with the following screen:

5. Click New and then press Next.

6. Choose the operating system type as Linux and version as Ubuntu. You can choose other OS type but this one is preferred.

7. Choose the memory limit that you wish to assign to Chrome OS. This would depend upon how much memory you have in the parent operating system. I have a low memory system in my laptop (512 Mb), thus i chose 300 Mb. If you assign a lot of memory to the virtual machine itself, your parent operating system might become slow, resulting in a system hangout.

8. Next, you would be prompted to create a new virtual machine hard disk. Ignore that option and choose “Use an existing hard disk”.

9. Click the browse button and navigate to the Chrome OS image file you have downloaded using the torrent earlier. Click select when you are done.

10. Hit finish and you are done setting up Chrome OS on a virtual machine.

Starting the Chrome OS operating System

You have just installed Chrome OS in virtual machine. Now it’s time to test how the OS works.

1. Start the Virtual box program and select the Chrome OS virtual machine. Click Start.

2. A Pop up window opens with a black screen and you will see Chrome OS boot screen within 15 seconds(expected time, may vary in different computers)

3. Enter the Google account details you created earlier and you can login to your Google Chrome OS.

There aren’t much features and applications that you can use, apart from the browser- Google chrome, which itself is the operating system. Note the battery icon in the top right corner and the application menu in the top left.

That’s all about installing and trying Chrome OS in a virtual machine environment. Have you set up yours ?