Enabling a captured VHD to boot in a Hyper-V Virtual Machine

In an earlier post, I wrote about how you can use WAIK tools to capture OS image from install.WIM in to a VHD. However, when we connect this VHD directly to a VM in Hyper-V environment, it simply won’t boot because there is no Boot Configuration Data within the VHD. Now, to be able to use this VHD in a Hyper-V VM, we need complete a few more steps.

We need to make the primary partition within the VHD “active”. To do this

• Open Diskpart
• Select vdisk file=C:\<VHDFILENAME>.VHD
• Attach Vdisk
• select part 1
• active
• Assign letter=Z
• exit
• Now, at the command prompt, change to Z:\Windows\System32
• Run, BCDboot.exe Z:\Windows /s Z:\
• Run, BCDedit /store Z:\boot\BCD /set {bootmgr} device boot
• Run, BCDedit /store Z:\boot\BCD /set {default} device boot
• Run, BCDedit /store Z:\boot\BCD /set {default} osdevice boot
• Change directory to C:\
• open Diskpart again and run
• Select vdisk file=C:\<VHDFILENAME>.VHD
• detach vDISK
• Exit

Now, create a new virtual machine within Hyper-V and connect this VHD to it. When you start this virtual machine, Windows OS gets installed (or Configured ??).

Ravikanth

A technology enthu and a Windows PowerShell MVP working on SharePoint solutions at Dell Inc. Has deep interests in Windows Server OS & Virtualization.

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Tagged as: Hyper-V, Native VHD, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2