Booting from a VHD on an Empty Hard Drive

Hi guys !!!

I have windows 8.1 x64 pro vhd (stored seperately on another drive).. and I envisaged a scenario where my current operating system goes bad i have to format it.. so now the whole drive is empty.. and i want to start my computer with the help of this windows 8.1 x64 pro vhd file.. How do i do it?

Thanks in advance

P.S I know about the boot order and stuff.. and i know how to transfer my vhd file to the current hard drive physically.

System Image Recovery

Gregrocker !!! Its not a system image created on a computer.. i've used imagex and extracted install.wim to this vhd.. so i'm not sure whether doing a system image recovery is the solution .. what do you think?

I would replace install.wim in the Sources folder of the Win7 ISO, do a Clean Install Windows 7.

Easiest way is use Windows 7 USB-DVD Download Tool to write the ISO for your licensed version to flash stick, delete install.wim from sources and copy in yours.

Let us know how this works. SIW2 will know some other possibly better ways to do it.

@gregrocker

How do i make my own install.wim ..which has all the programs that i installed in the vhd?

@Kaktussoft Yeah installation dvd iso.. and installed some programs in the vhd

@Kaktussoft .. Once you boot into it (the vhd) .. you can .. its pretty much like ur windows operating system .. you can add, remove do anything

A .vhd is a file used by Windows Backup Imaging to reimage Win7. It can be mounted in Disk Mgmt using Virtual Hard Disk - Create and Attach VHD to browse its files. I don't know how it relates to install.wim but I've asked our professor SIW2 to explain it.