VHD does not appear in partition list when installing Win2008

Question

I am trying, without success, to create a bootable Win 2008 R2 VHD on my Win7 Ultimate box. I can create the VHD, in Drive Manager I can see the VHD, but when I run the 2008 R2 Setup, it never shows up in the partition listing! I just watched the entire video at http://blogs.technet.com/b/danstolts/archive/2011/08/15/boot2vhd-part-1-overview-of-native-boot-to-vhd.aspx and did not get any more clues from that. Part III is what I am trying to do as I do not want to lose my physical boot image (Win 7 Ultimate) as I have a year of fiddling to get all of my projects to run properly.

I've also looked at Scott's blog entry at http://www.hanselman.com/blog/StepByStepTurningAWindows7DVDOrISOIntoABootableVHDVirtualMachine.aspx. The auto-goodness of WIM2VHD will only install Win7 and the successor (Convert-WindowsImage.ps1) will only run if you are already on a WIn8/Win2012 image.

Any ideas?

TIA

Answer 1

Did you take a look at this page? This is for Windows 7, but it should be the same for 2008 R2. You may also be able to press F8 during the install to launch cmd.exe (on some versions, I can't remember for sure with 2008 R2).

1. Boot the machine using the Windows 7 DVD
2. Choose Windows Repair
3. start CMD
4. Run Diskpart
5. Type: Create vdisk file=c:\Windows7.vhd maximum=40000 type=expandable
6. Type: select vdisk file=c:\Windows7.vhd
7. Type: attach vdisk (in previous Betas, it was 'surface' instead of 'attach')
8. Type: 'exit' (you exit Windows Repair, but Do Not Reboot)
9. Install Windows 7 to this attached .VHD (From Win7 installation, you now have to 'see' another Hard Drive, you'll need to create a partition & format it, first. You might get an error/warning saying that your computer hardware might not support this disk, just ignore it..).
10. Reboot, and you got it!!!!