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I'm wondering if it's possibile to have Win7 kernel and relative drivers (especially storage drivers) to boot from an initrd-like image file (maybe .wim?) and later then mount the windows root partition and complete the load of the full OS?
I'll try to explain why: I'm running an emulated environment with NO REAL BIOS, and I'm passingthrough a raid storage controller. I want windows to boot from this controller array, but of course the BCD manager cannot access disks in the array until kernel and relative controller storage drivers are loaded. To be clear I get the classical winload.exe missing error.
I need a similar solution to what Linux does, loading the kernel and his drivers, and later then mount the root partition and complete the boot.
Any ideas or advices?
Ivo
Posted 2012-07-10T14:27:45.097
Reputation: 21
I see that the boot loader object in the BCD store contains two separate settings, device and osdevice, so if these are pointing to different places it might do what you want. I can't find any documentation on them though. – Harry Johnston – 2012-07-10T23:42:53.537
It seems you can point device and osdevice at vhd images: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd638420%28v=ws.10%29.aspx
– Harry Johnston – 2012-07-10T23:44:54.250One possible issue would be keeping the boot image synchronized with the contents of the real Windows instance, e.g., when installing updates. – Harry Johnston – 2012-07-10T23:46:14.197