Windows 10: Hyper-V - Native Boot VHD

I see that your physical Ethernet adapter is disabled in device manager. Could that have something to do with it?

Also, some laptops use a software-enabled switch to enable and disable the Wifi adapter, and if you don't have this driver installed, the adapter won't show up.

 

That might be because it is completely totally absolutely profoundly irrelevant if installation is on HDD, SSD, USB Flash Drive, SD Card or VHD! Think: compared to a physical installation on same machine the absolutely only difference is disk. As you for certainly know, what kind of disk Windows is installed on has nothing to do with a non-functioning or not found NIC.

 

You are right.

So irrelevant that I have deleted the entire partition I was using for this exercise. My curiosity is gone. In retrospect perhaps I should have started a new thread with this issue over in the Drivers and Hardware forum.

 

Mystere had a good idea which I had tested first: although you said your Ethernet NIC is not compatible with 1703, I had enabled it to see if disabling it had something to do with your issue, especially because both NICs are from same manufacturer. If they were from different manufacturers it would be harder to believe disabling one could affect the other but in your case both are Realtek.

 

Yes it was a good idea and it may have had something to do with this issue. I may rekindle my interest if a compatible driver is released for the Ethernet NIC in Windows 1703. I learned some things that I did not know from your tutorial. Thanks for all your input and all you do for Windows TenForums.

 

Hello, and thank you for the great article. i have a question about primary usage. If a system is configured to boot automatically into the VM, will i be able to use it exactly as i would any other OS? What im wondering about is backup. i would like to create a system to natively boot from the VHD, create a backup volume for the full backup image, and one for the incremental backup image. What i am trying to build is a system that i can easily perform a full restore on if the VM gets corrupted by ransomware or other malware. so say one day i am surfing and catch a nasty virus that hangs the system. i would like to go into the management console and import my backup. once i have my VM running again then i can update any other files from the incremental backup. would this work? the boot information will stay the same correct?

 

Hi Kari,

very very helpful post. I really like it. I had already done this before I found your great tutorial. But that time I was running into an issue and I would like to ask you if you could give me a hint how to solve this.

The issue is when I switch between the Hyper-V and start the VDHX File there and then back to Native Boot from the Bootmenu, Windows keeps asking for a new activation. So each time I change it will activate. Now it seems that I have been run into the limit of activations. Under this circumstances I need to decide either to use Hyper-V or Native Boot, which was not my plan. I want to use both systems in parallel.
Can you help me out here, how do you manage that, and overcome this activation stuff? Many Thanks.

Cheers
Maik

 

In simple terms a vm counts as a separate device, so to run both systems in parallel requires two licences. Even if we knew ways of activating both with one licence, we would not be permitted to tell you as that is against the law, and the forum would ban us if we discussed such matters.


Also, of course, you cannot use same vhd in native boot or hyper-v at same time.

 

Hi cereberus,

thanks for the reply. But even if I would by 2 versions of windows, how can we solve this technically?
I mean each time it will switch hardware and asks again. So in this case if even doesn't help to buy 2 licenses.
Is that assumption correct?

 

Once it is licensed on each device, you should get a digital licence at each should activate automatically. You should not need to do anything.

 

Kari, Thank you for the awesome post!
I have been native booting VHD and VHDX files for years! I have used this for my previous Laptop but this new laptop has a SSD and I usually have to add the SSD driver during windows install, but by installing in Hyper-V I didn't get the driver installed.
I have tried installing the driver in Hyper-V but I still can't get the VHDX file to Native boot.
Any direction or recommendations would be appreciated.
Thank you,
Ryan aka

 

Hello Ryan, welcome to Ten Forums.

A VHD or VHDX file can be serviced offline. Fast and easy way for you to get drivers installed would be to follow instructions in this tutorial: DISM - Add or Remove Drivers on an Offline Image

Export your existing drivers from host, including SSD drivers as told in Step Two in above mentioned tutorial (you can skip Step One), then follow instructions told in Steps Three, Four and Five.

Not only do you get all drivers injected to your VHD / VHDX but you also speed up its first native boot significantly because all drivers are already installed.

 

Kari, Thank you for the direction. I will give that a go tonight.
Last night I thought I had a workaround. Previously I had created a custom Win 10 Pro iso image from a install on this laptop (I will see if I can find the guide that I followed and link to it as well) that I have been using to install Windows into a VHD/VHDX file. I tried that with your method in this post and after the original install it worked. I was able to native boot and then restart in my base OS and boot back in Hyper-V. However after I installed the new update (Specifically the Feature update Win 10 ver 1709) in Hyper-V, it will no longer native boot. I will try to troubleshoot a bit on that later tonight as well to see if I can identify what is going wrong (I enabled boot logging and will look at the log later).
Again thank you for your post and the follow up help!
Ryan