Comments on: Boot Windows Server 2008 R2 RC from VHD within Windows 7

By: Jenkins NS

Jenkins NS — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 19:16:15 +0000

Dear Marin

Today I installed Windows 7 Ultimate in my Laptop. i5 64bit Processor and 8GB Ram machine.
After that i have follow your steps, all operations are sucessfully completed. Then i restart my laptop it highlight both choices Windows 7 and my VHD Windows 2008. i have selected Windows 2008 its lauch startup repair screen, when i click finish its shutdown the machine. kindly guide me.

By: Jenkins NS

Jenkins NS — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 15:18:08 +0000

Thank you Marin Frankovic

By: Marin Franković

Marin Franković — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 11:42:29 +0000

Hi Jenkins NS,

according to TechNet article http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd440865(WS.10).aspx, “Native boot from a VHD is available in Windows 7 Enterprise, Windows 7 Ultimate, and all versions of Windows Server 2008 R2.”.

By: Jenkins NS

Jenkins NS — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 11:34:21 +0000

Hi Marin Frankovic

Thanks for your information.
Could you please guide me, Its windows 7 means all verison right?
(Home Basic, Home premium and etc…).

Thanks
Jenkins NS

By: Marin Franković

Marin Franković — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 12:38:47 +0000

Hi Ravi,

you are downlaoding premade VHD that is supposed to be used in Hyper-V only. Procedure I explained shows how to install Windows Server 2008 R2 as dual boot option with Windows 7.

By: Ravi

Ravi — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 00:42:04 +0000

I am using windows 7 ,i am trying to install the windows Server 2008 R2 64 bit , in my machine but when i use vm and selected existing virtual disk , and start the vm it is loading but always rebooting and rebooting never showing up the screen , and it showing a dialog after some time with system recovery options
1)system image recovery
2)windows memory diagnostic
command prompt

I have tried many times downloading the vhds from the
http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=16572
full download 1.93 GB

still the same issue , unable to load te windows 2008 r2 vm.
thanks in advance,

please suggest

By: Marin Franković

Marin Franković — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 10:22:39 +0000

Hi Yas,

I am glad that everything worked out!

By: Yas

Yas — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 09:03:08 +0000

My Laptop already had Windows7 installed yet I was trying to setup Win 2008 R2 as a dual boot option as your article detailed. I deleted the vhd file using standard WindowsDos commands and started afresh. Hey presto WIn2k8R2 is now installed and available as a bootup option. What I did learn was that the drive (c:) i initially created the vhd file on was not the C: drive I see from Windows. My C: drive is actually the d: drive when I went through Command prompt during the installation. It has been a while since I’ve had to use the Dos commands.:)

By: Marin Franković

Marin Franković — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 13:37:16 +0000

Hi,

so you do have Windows 7 installed on one of your partitions and now you want to erase VHD file and create new one? VHD that you created is nothing more than a file. Log in to your Win 7 installation, open My Computer and open C drive. There should be your VHD. Delete it and start over.

By: Yas

Yas — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 12:01:17 +0000

Hi Marin. Im sure your procedure works but my trawling of the Web to find a method to delete the vhd file has so far failed painfully. I am of the persuasion that there must be a diskpart command to do this in the same manner that it is created in the 1st place? When I run list vdisk – no object is returned, yet I am able to attach the vdisk, albeit temporarily. I am not keen to reformat. Gracias!

By: Marin Franković

Marin Franković — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 11:42:57 +0000

Hi Yas,

procedure was tested and works fine. Yes, you can reformat your hard drive or delete created vhd file and start over again.

By: Yas

Yas — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 11:32:25 +0000

Hi. I followed your instructions to install Windows 2008 R2 from VHD within Windows 7. I saw the newly created ‘partition’ and selected it as the location of the install. Everything appeared to run smoothly thus far. Whilst the W2k8r2 installation was in gear it showed that there were 4 or 5 phases to the process. Halfway through the first phase it bombed out saying something about not being able to connect to network.’ When I now try to repeat the process the ‘partition’ (vhd) cannot be seen as an option. When I go to Diskpart the VHD file appears detached. I can re-attach the same file but as soon as I exit from Diskpart the VHD detaches itself. I checked by going back to Diskpart and running list vdisk.I cannot understand why the vhd file is not persisting as an attached VDISK. Can I delete the vhd file and start afresh?

By: MathieuC

MathieuC — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 11:35:03 +0000

Hi Eric,
Your RECOVERY partition is full…
You may have cerated the VHD on your RECOVERY partition and maybe fix this mistake by recreating the vhd on the right partition. Due to this, you should have one VHD remaining on your recovery partition and the checking process for free space is looking each partition and recovery should have a minimum of free space…

By: Manny

Manny — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 04:35:45 +0000

Just wanted to let everyone know IF you are not installing Win2008sevr2 in a physical computer. You can still install it Win2008serv2 with Hype using the vmware fusion and follow the steps mention above. The only difference used the command line once you have long on into windows 7 to attach the virtual hard drive.

By: Robert

Robert — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 18:07:21 +0000

Update to my last post, I have resolved the issue, by BCD did not have the setting to automatically enable the Hypervisor.

By: Robert

Robert — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 23:49:31 +0000

Hi there, we have been running systems with the following setup, using boot to VHD, since aug last year. 1.5 T drive with 50GB base partition (we use this for admin) and then the balance of the drive has 16 VHD files, thus allowing multiboot to 17 different Windows 7 OS vhd’s. This has been working a treat until recently where we have changed one of the VHD’s to be server 2008R2, the server2008R2 boots no problem, however the VHD’s within the hyper-V don’t boot , stating that the hypervisor isn’t running. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Many thanks in advance

By: Ron Jerby

Ron Jerby — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 03:58:20 +0000

Hahaha…i made the same mistake of running Win2k8 R2 Setup in Windows 7, that’s why I the error appeared. Thanks for this comment

By: Shawn Cicoria

Shawn Cicoria — Sun, 16 Jan 2011 13:23:29 +0000

If you use virtual box, make sure you change the drive (on the host) from a SCSI device to an IDE device. Otherwise, you get BSOD’s – not 100% sure why.

On booting to VHD, yes, you will have to install a whole bunch of HW drivers specific to your host. The existing image is a 2K8R2 image, which has all the Hyper-V extensions as part of the os image. So, I knonw this works, the un-pretty part is just installing all your drivers, etc.

Not 100% sure what/when you say it’s going into repiar mode duing boot.

By: h.khan

h.khan — Sun, 16 Jan 2011 13:07:39 +0000

Hi Shawn & Marin,

I have tried to load to VHD from BCD but, the O/S goes into repair mode. I suspect the H/W config does not matches.
Anyway, I have a try with Virtual Box which is good.

Thanks!!

By: Marin Franković

Marin Franković — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 19:42:47 +0000

Hi Shawn,

thanks for the clarification on this.