Technology, Support, and News Forum

[Harwood Profile]

Since using this capablity requires putting the full path and file name of the VHD file in the BCDEdit file, how do I do it with VistaProBoot? See http://edge.technet.com/Media/Windows-7-Boot-from-VHD/

[Grav!ty Profile]

If you've successfully mounted the VHD and it appears in Computer, you can try to Add New OS Entry>OS Type Vista or Legacy depending on what you have on the VHD>Drive Letter as per Computer and give the entry a name, on the Manage OS Entries page of VistaBootPRO.

My understanding of Virtual PC is that running a VHD requires Windows (the host operating system)to be active so, without particularly wanting to research this issue at present, I personally have my doubts about the ability to run a VHD from the boot menu. Seems to me the menu entry would need to call both the host operating system and the guest operating system on the VHD

This is beyond the intended scope of the current version of VistaBootPRO however, as it was not created with that functionality in mind.

[yeshuas]

If you've successfully mounted the VHD and it appears in Computer, you can try to Add New OS Entry>OS Type Vista or Legacy depending on what you have on the VHD>Drive Letter as per Computer and give the entry a name, on the Manage OS Entries page of VistaBootPRO.

My understanding of Virtual PC is that running a VHD requires Windows (the host operating system)to be active so, without particularly wanting to research this issue at present, I personally have my doubts about the ability to run a VHD from the boot menu. Seems to me the menu entry would need to call both the host operating system and the guest operating system on the VHD

This is beyond the intended scope of the current version of VistaBootPRO however, as it was not created with that functionality in mind.

I am pretty sure that you need the host to be running prior to running a VM hence the term Virtual Machine

A virtual machine was originally defined by Popek and Goldberg as "an efficient, isolated duplicate of a real machine". Current use includes virtual machines which have no direct correspondence to any real hardware.[1]

Virtual machines are separated into two major categories, based on their use and degree of correspondence to any real machine. A system virtual machine provides a complete system platform which supports the execution of a complete operating system (OS). In contrast, a process virtual machine is designed to run a single program, which means that it supports a single process. An essential characteristic of a virtual machine is that the software running inside is limited to the resources and abstractions provided by the virtual machine -- it cannot break out of its virtual world.

[Grav!ty Profile]

See http://edge.technet.com/Media/Windows-7-Boot-from-VHD/

It does appear Windows 7 has native support for creating VHD's without having to install Virtual PC, and it does appear that one can setup a multiboot environment amongst VHD's and utilize the full actual hardware of a system to configure a VHD

Booting from VHDs means booting the machine as if running from primary hard disk so your operating system will leverage all the hardware available in your system like Graphics, Wireless, USB etc. which is not possible in most of the virtual environment.

Enabling that requires running the WAIK and Sysprep as far as I can tell...looks like a huge improvement on Virtual PC and VMware Virtual Machine to me.

[yeshuas]

Wow I am going to have to give this a go, to see if I can get it running, I stand corrected, I didn't think this was possible

[Grav!ty Profile]

Somehow I get the feeling this kinda defeats the purpose of virtualization though. I mean whats the difference then if you can boot directly to a virtual machine HDD? Sounds just like being able to boot to a normal HDD or partition to me or have I got it totally wrong?

[yeshuas]

Somehow I get the feeling this kinda defeats the purpose of virtualization though. I mean whats the difference then if you can boot directly to a virtual machine HDD? Sounds just like being able to boot to a normal HDD or partition to me or have I got it totally wrong?

If it works where you can boot to it, then I say you have it pretty much right, and I am then confused as to how it can be considered Virtual, oh well I will give it a go tomorrow sometime just to see if I can accomplish it at any rate.