Virtual machines: VMware and Hyper-V living in the same host computer

Among the powerful and useful features that come with Windows 8 Pro is the Hyper-V technology, specifically Client Hyper-V (as opposed to Server Hyper-V, present in Windows Server 2012). This technology is Microsoft's response to the established and solid VMware virtualization tools. However, it is not possible to run both Hyper-V and VMware in the same machine at the same time and you will learn that as soon as you try to run one or the other system. It's an either/or proposition, but there is a solution: you can create two different ways of booting up Windows 8 as if there were two different operating systems. The main reason for this is that Hyper-V is a "layer" (type 1 hypervisor) loaded on top of the hardware layer before the operating system is loaded, whereas VMware is a virtualization engine (type 2 hypervisor) that is sitting on top of the operating system. So, the trick is to create two choices (as shown to the right) when starting your computer. For this you need to add an entry to the Boot Configuration Data (BCD) store which contains boot configuration parameters and controls how the operating system is started, using the "bcdedit" command. These parameters were previously in the Boot.ini file (in BIOS-based operating systems). Follow these instructions, as I successfully did, to configure Windows 8 to boot either Hyper-V or VMware. Please, make sure you know what you are doing. If all goes well you will see a similar start-up screen as shown here. To use VMware virtual machines start with "NoHyperV".