Can't boot vista VHD from windows 7 box

[madtester]

Have been playing with the booting of vhd's with windows 7, bcdedit, diskpart, imagex etc...


When I make another windows 7 VHD, it works fine. HOWEVER, when I attempt to boot my VHD with vista WIM.................it goes into this setup repair deal.



Can someone help me out, so I can stop banging my head against the wall. Thanks a bunch


From what I can tell this should be possible.

 

[Brink]

Hello Madtester, and welcome to Seven Forums.

What edition of Windows 7 do you have?

While all Windows 7 editions can create and attach a VHD, only the Windows 7 Ultimate and Enterprise editions support booting from a VHD.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/2953-virtual-hard-drive-vhd-file-create-start-boot.html

or

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/625-boot-vhd-using-windows-7-a.html

Hope this helps for now,
Shawn

 

[madtester]

Hi there. Thanks for the links. I have seen these write ups, let me clarify.


My real os is windows 7 enter. and I'm attempting to install a .wim from vista to .vhd, and be able to boot to that virtually installed vista machine. The image apply and everything else works well, I see the vista at boot.......but it goes into a repair screen and I can't fix it.


I've been able to boot other win7 virtuals on VHD's and they boot FINE.



Am I trying to do something that isn't possible?

Could I need a specific edition of vista?

 

[huisinro]

It does not work that way. Only Windows 7 can boot from a VHD using Microsoft's technology.

We are working on a different approach called VBoot, which allows you to boot xp, vista, 7 and Linux from a VHD/VMDK file on windows or Linux host PCs.

e.g., following link has a pre-created Ubuntu VHD 10.4 that boots everywhere

http://www.vmlite.com/index.php/forums/17-vboot/2098-ubuntu-1004-vhd-available-for-download

We have released the Linux version, the Windows version will come up next couple of months.

 

[madtester]

So what you are saying is you can only boot virtual win 7 installs from another windows 7 installation, that even if you main OS is 7, you won't be able to dual boot to a vista vhd at start up?


dang,

 

[huisinro]

Exactly. only windows 7, 2008 R2 can boot from VHD. Old windows versions won't.

In order to boot from VHD, the os itself has to do something, so you can't just put an OS into a VHD, and expect it to boot. The OS must be VHD aware in boot stages.

 

[madtester]

ok thanks. I was hoping there was a way to do it for vista/xp, obviously before then wouldn't work. So I take it it's because the way the bootloader works is totally different with win7, no longer using the .ini as it's main source. Can't microsoft easily make this possible?


is there some way to configure a vista specially, THEN image it so its setup to be able to boot on a vhd from a windows 7 machine?


basically work around the issue?

 

[huisinro]

That's what our VBoot software does exactly. It's very difficult technology, not as simple as tweaking some boot parameters. .ini or BCDedit does not matter, the Windows kernel (or Linux kernel) itself needs to be changed in order to boot from VHD.

 

[madtester]

Very interested in your windows version of the software. We will want to purchase it as long as it doesn't violate any testing objectivity we are trying to keep. Seriously intersted as I'm not doing this for fun


Keep us updated!

 

[madtester]

Do you know if things like winlogocert etc. will be valid on a system utilizing vboot?

 

[huisinro]

winlogocert is application level, so it should work. VBoot takes over from the early boot stages, and windows app wouldn't know it.