Windows 10: Upgading OS in a VHD.

I know that you cannot upgrade OS in a VHD without importing VHD into Hyper-V.
@Kari showed a way of doing this with mbr format, but I would prefer using UEFI.

This means the vhd also needs an EFI partition in the vhd.

This set me thinking. The efi partition does not need to be on same drive as the OS as we know.

So I am thinking, I could install EFI on one vhd, and OS on another and it should boot in the vm? May need to use Macrium Reflect Fix boot problems link..

This is a more academic question but it does mean if have a vhd without the EFI partition, I do not have to mess around adding efi partition to vhd?

:)

 

Windows 10 VHD Native Boot Installation--Officially Supported?

We run our Windows 10 dev environments using Native Boot/Boot to VHD. In fact, a couple of my co-workers are running Fall Creators update with no issues. The main things you need to look out for when using Native Boot are:

• VHD: Make sure you build the image with the correct generation for your hardware in Hyper-V (Generation 1 for legacy BIOS systems, Generation 2 for UEFI)
  
• Drivers: Some newer computers use M.2 drives/specialized RAID controllers for it's primary drive. A typical bare metal installation will install those drivers during setup, but since Hyper-V emulates a different set of hardware, the drivers
  won't be present.
  
  For example, on some corporate Dell laptops, they are using two M.2 SSD drives in a RAID configuration. The drivers weren't included as part of the standard Windows 10 installation. To get the VHD working with Native Boot, I had to download the drivers from
  Dell's website, and install them to the image's driver store using the Deployment Image Servicing and Management (DISM) tool, which is built into Windows (E:\ is where I mounted the VHD in my host OS, and I copied the drivers to E:\Raid):
  
  dism /image:E:\ /add-driver /driver:E:\Raid\iaAHCIC.inf
  
  dism /image:E:\ /add-driver /driver:E:\Raid\iaStorAC.inf
  
  Once the drivers were installed in the driver store, I re-attempted Native Boot, the kernel was able to load the driver, the image booted successfully.
  

• Major OS updates have to be done in Hyper-V: With a Native Boot setup, BOOTMGR/NTLDR and your BCD configuration reside within your host OS partition. While Windows PE (Pre-installation Environment) can find that information, it only supports
  installation to a physical partition (VHD's aren't suported.) That being said, once you perform the OS upgrade in Hyper-V, you may need to re-install drivers, as well as fix your BCD entries as needed. I've also had issues with images not booting due to
  the host OS using an older/unsupported version of BOOTMGR/NTLDR. That can be fixed by booting into your host OS, mounting the VHD, and running the \Windows\system32\bootsect.exe command from your VHD against your host OS's boot partition (E:\ is where I mounted
  the VHD in my host OS):
  
  E:\Windows\system32\bootsect.exe /nt60 C: /mbr

Hopefully this information helps anyone else trying to get their VHD's to Native Boot successfully.

 

VHD

How exactly did you manage to create a 1 TByte VHD on a 300 GByte disk?

 

VHD to virtual PC

does anyone know of an easy way to convert a VHD made using an old backup into a virtual PC