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

By: Marin Franković

Marin Franković — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 11:52:12 +0000

Hi gboucha,

you should sysprep it. Regarding boot from USB stick, did you see this article: http://blog.frankovic.net/2010/06/install-windows-server-2008-r2-or-windows-7-on-usb-stick/ ?

By: gbuchoa

gbuchoa — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 11:23:03 +0000

Ok, that doesn’t work. I copied the VHD from my notebook – where it was created – to the desktop, and when trying to boot from it, all I got was a black screen and a reboot. Shame, it would be extremely useful, even more if it could be done from a USB stick… Imagine the uses for a “mobile boot”

By: GB

GB — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 01:52:16 +0000

Well that’s what I did so far: my only boot was a W2K8, and I had VM’s to test SharePoint 2010, wich runs poorly on 2Gb RAM. So your tip allowed me to use all my (4Gb) RAM and CPU to run the test boot – wich I could not do using a VM on Hyper-V. I used differencing disks, wich allowed me to rollback the “damage” the tests did on the boot in a very easy way. And yesterday I reformatted my machine and got back to W7 (the USB TV receiver I bought did not work on W2K8, so I could not watch the Soccer World Cup matches at work – that’s a completely valid reason to reformat your machine here in Brazil , well, I moved back to W7 and all I had to do to run the W2K8 boot was to duplicate the W7 boot entry and modify it to point to th W2K8 vhd – a couple of bcdedit commands, I’ll put them on my blog in case there’s anyone interested.

I’ll copy the VHD to see if it works on another machine without sisprep and post here the result.

By: Marin Franković

Marin Franković — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 15:41:43 +0000

It definitely should be enough. Well, maybe you selected the wrong one. It is very hard to help you like this. Maybe the best thing would be to try again.

By: Eric

Eric — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 15:37:59 +0000

I set the vfile to 100G – maximum=100000, should be big enough.

By: Marin Franković

Marin Franković — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 15:31:05 +0000

Hi Eric,

it seems that your partition was too small. Please read carefully instructions and try again.

By: Eric

Eric — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 15:14:05 +0000

I followed the instruction here, once I selected the Unallocated Space (the vdisk), clicked Next, it said “Setup was unable to use the existing system partition because it does not contain the required free space”, and can not move forward. I’ve tried fixed and expandable, both same issue. After I reboot back to win7, I saw the vhd file is created.
Any clue?

By: Marin Franković

Marin Franković — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 18:43:38 +0000

Hi GB,

The right way to transfer VHD to another system is to sysprep the OS after installation in VHD and start it on other computer. But that would not give you true mobility between computers since you had to sysprep it every time you move it to another machine. I did not try it with bcdedit detecthal switch. If you try it, please let me know if it works or not.

By: GB

GB — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 18:31:59 +0000

Hi Marin, thanx for the great and simple way on creating a W2008 bootable VHD. I’ve been to several “how to’s” on that but they are too complicated or require too many things/tools to work. I have one question: can I move the VHD to another machine? I saw elsewhere that there is some “detecthal” option on bcdedit, maybe it can be used to that?

By: Noizychild

Noizychild — Wed, 19 May 2010 21:12:50 +0000

You give me a great solution. Thanx Marin!

By: Marin Franković

Marin Franković — Wed, 19 May 2010 20:04:14 +0000

Hi Noizychild,

of course you can do that. Although, I use external USB to store my VHD, because of disk space.

By: Noizychild

Noizychild — Wed, 19 May 2010 19:54:41 +0000

It’s possible to boot Hyper V R2 from VHD and then run guest os in Hyper V (vhd in vhd) for teaching purposes?

By: Jos

Jos — Tue, 18 May 2010 17:53:03 +0000

Thx, Marin. I gues I have to dl R2 then…

By: Marin Franković

Marin Franković — Tue, 18 May 2010 17:50:17 +0000

Hi Jos,

SBS 2008 is based on Windows Server 2008 (http://www.microsoft.com/sbs/en/us/compare-features.aspx). Boot from VHD is available only in Windows Server 2008 R2.

By: Jos

Jos — Tue, 18 May 2010 17:43:06 +0000

Hi, I tried to install W2008 to a VHD but I do not get Shift + F10 to show a command prompt on the first installation dialog. Pressing Shift+F10 but nothing happens! Can it be that Small Business Server behaviour differs?

By: Marin Franković

Marin Franković — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 07:56:27 +0000

Hi Brian,

did you sysprep that VHD image created in Hyper-V? Bare in mind that virtual processors and IDE controllers are represented differently in virtual and physical world.

By: Brian

Brian — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 04:16:32 +0000

Thanks for this post. I still don’t understand why the Windows Server 2008 R2 image I created using Hyper V BSOD’d when I tried to boot it natively. I felt better knowing I wasn’t alone in getting that behavior. I proceeded with your second option and it worked without any problems.

By: Jacob

Jacob — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 02:29:56 +0000

Thank you for leaving this comment up… I made the exact same mistake… try number 2.

By: Olops

Olops — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 09:22:00 +0000

I see.. I’ve tried WinImage but no luck coz it is not giving me an option to select a partition or drive letter.It just gives the option to format the whole physical drive (disk 0) and restore the content from the VHD. Anyway, I’ll try Ghost.. Should I expect to encounter a trouble on that? If yes, what are those trouble and how to resolve them?.. Thank you!..

By: Marin Franković

Marin Franković — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 08:48:12 +0000

You can not boot Windows XP from VHD file. You can only boot Windows Server 2008 R2 or Windows 7 from VHD. The easiest way, that comes to my mind right now, to “convert” VHD to physical disk is to start your VHD in Virtual PC, use Ghost to capture OS image in Virtual PC and then deploy that image on physical computer.