This is the moment you have all been waiting for, folks! Windows 8 Release preview is here, and you can download it now.

Installation Guide

I recommend installing the release preview directly from within Windows, if possible. I recommend you do this even if you plan to do a clean install. Running the setup program directly from an existing installation of Windows will give you the most possible options and also make the process of downloading and installing much faster.

Unlike previous versions of Windows, you do not need to download an ISO image to install Windows 8. All you need is to download the setup executable that is only a few megabytes in size. Run the setup program and it will guide you through installing Windows 8 the way you want to. You can download the setup executable from here.

Running the setup program will give you multiple options, with which you can install Windows. First of all, you can install Windows directly from the setup program, which will download all the files and install the OS without you having to worry about making a DVD, mounting an ISO, or booting off of an USB drive. If you choose this method, you can choose to keep all your programs and files (windows 7 must be already installed), just keep your files and settings (Windows Vista or XP must already be installed), or not keep anything, which is equivalent to a clean install.

You can also choose the option to create an ISO image, burn setup files to disc, or create a bootable USB drive. These options are for power users and if you know what you are doing, they can be very useful!

I will have screenshots shortly. So come back to this post soon for a guided screenshot to help you get through the installation.

One Last Note

Regardless of how you upgrade, all files from your previous Windows Installation that was not migrated to Windows 8 (Depending on the type of upgrade you chose) will be placed in a folder called “Windows.old”. You can manually cut and paste documents, files, and other stuff to Windows 8 that hasn’t automatically transferred. Once done, you can use disk cleanup to remove the Windows.old folder to save a huge amounts of disk space. For this to work, DO NOT FORMAT YOUR DRIVE, even if you are doing a clean install.