Windows 7: Virtual Hard Drive VHD File - Create and Start with at Boot

Hello Zoe Chan,

Could you give us more details at exactly what point it does not seem to be working for you?

Double check to make sure that you read all of the information at the top of the tutorial, and that you are following the steps exactly. One mistake made, and it will not work.

Are you using a retail Windows 7 installation disc?

Are you using step 5 or 6?

Did you type the commands exactly as posted with the correct spacing in it?

Dear Shawn,



I had follow everything and this is de screen shoot i got there....

I got Win 7 Ultimate 64 as my base, am trying to put Vista image on the VHD.

Is this possible??

Zoe

Zoe,

If you were installing Windows 7 as the VHD, then yes, but not with Vista.

Instead, you will need to use this tutorial below with having Vista as the VHD.

Boot from a VHD using Windows 7

Shawn,

I had follow de steps and now am getting this VHD_Boot on my boot menu.

But now the question is.. how am I going to put in my Vista OS??

I try to boot from de Vista DVD but under the partition selection to install, there is no VHD...

BILLION OF THANKS!!

Zoe

Zoe,

In that tutorial, you would have needed to create the Vista VHD first using something like Windows Virtual PC, then use the tutorial to attach that VHD to run at boot instead.

Hi

I used this method to install win 7 x86 in dual boot on my win 7 x64 laptop. I created the fixed VHD(40GB) on my win 7 x64 partition which is 100GB and had 60GB free.

Everything went great but I have only one problem. After the dual boot, both of my win 7 x64 and x86 take about 1min40s to 2 min to boot. It stays on the ‘Starting windows’ boot screen for too long. After booting everything works normally as before. Before trying this method out, my primary win 7 x64 took only 35-40 sec to boot.

Does anyone have a clue as to what might be causing this problem? Also I have another partition D for my data which has 180GB free. Will creating the VHD in my D drive instead of C drive solve this slow boot problem?

Hello Max,

It's sounds like there may be something that is not loading properly at startup, say a driver.

Enable boot logging in each Windows 7 as below in msconfig, then restart the computer and open the C:\Windows\ntbtlog.txt log file in each Windows 7 to see if there were any drivers that did not get loaded. If so, reinstall the drivers to see if that helps.

Hi Brink

i tried what you said but there was no ntbtlog.txt file in windows folder or even my whole C drive.

also after doing many reboots i found that this problem is completely random. For 2-3 reboots in a row my pc boots fast as it normally used to and for the next couple of boots it is slow.. i guess i will live with that till the next time I format my pc...

thanks for your help..

Well, that's incouraging that it's only random. You might run a startup repair to see if it may find anything and may be able to fix it if so.

Hi Shawn,

In my quest to study the VHD possibilities a bit more, I got to your interesting tutorial and the following conversation. And I was wondering whether it would not be the easiest to use Wbadmin to create the VHD - or am i missing something. Unfortunately all my systems are Home Premium - so I cannot boot from VHD. But I am still trying to figure out how to restore that VHD image. Maybe using the Windows installation media and selecting repair would get me somewhere.