Natively booting to a VHD with Windows 7 - 10 Steps to VHD’ness

Cesar de la Torre – BLOG - Windows 7 - Natively Booting from a .VHD file (Virtual PC image)

“Most important thing to keep in mind is that we currently cannot boot from any kind of .VHD.

Actually, I have just managed to boot from a Windows 7 installed on a new .VHD, and I installed it right from the Windows 7 DVD. We can do a similar process with "Windows Server 2008 R2 (beta)" installed on a .VHD file, as well.

If you'd use Virtual PC 2007 to install the Virtual image, the produced .VHD wouldn't work when trying to boot from the .VHD.

A.-  Creating the .VHD file and Windows 7 installation on that .VHD file

1. Boot the machine using the Windows 7 DVD

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10. Reboot, and you got it!!!!

B.- Configure boot options

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Hardware 2.0 - How-to: Getting started with .VHD files in Windows 7 

“Some of you seem confused about how Windows 7 goes about supporting .VHD files as used by Virtual PC, Windows Server 2008 R2 and Hyper-V. Here’s a quick how-to work with .VHD files in Windows 7.

OK, let’s begin with a Windows 7 beta 1 install. Fire up a Command Prompt and type the following:

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This is something I’ve wanted to see since it was mentioned at PDC. There’s just something I find too cool about booting to a VHD. Now if I can configure it in such a way as to have differencing disks (i.e. to have the base OS on the main and then later “new” stuff on the diff’s, making it drop dead easy to revert back to a clean/base OS, or to start a new chain off of that base… etc)