Start your computer with Windows 7 VHD

VHD Native Boot is one of the new important features of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 that allows the system to boot directly from the VHD.

1. Description

Windows 7 Enterprise or Ultimate Edition, other versions do not support

Windows Server 2008 R2 except for the Foundation Edition version is not supported, other versions support

The system must have two partitions, the System partition must have Windows 7 Boot_environmenet Files and BCD Storage

If the VHD file type is dynamically extended, you must ensure that the disk has enough disk space.

Maximum MOUNT 512 VHD files

Systems booted from VHD, system hibernation and Over SMB sharing are not supported

The volume that holds the VHD file does not support Bitlock encryption. The parent partition of the VHD file does not support the Volume Snaphot function.

VHD cannot be configured as a dynamic disk, and software is also supported. Raid

VHD does not have CACHE compared to physical hard disk, so when writing data, VHD hard disk is somewhat different from physical hard disk, but the read performance is basically similar to physical hard disk.

Second, must-have tools

1, Bcdboot

Bcdboot - Bcd startup file creation and repair tool.

The bcdboot.exe command-line tool is used to copy key startup files to the system partition and create new system BCD storage.

bcdboot <source> [/l <locale>] [/s <volume-letter>] [/v]

[/m [{ OS Loader ID}]]

source Specifies the location of the windows system root directory.

/l Specifies optional locale parameters to use when initializing BCD storage.

The default value is “Simplified Chinese”.

/s Specifies an optional volume number parameter that specifies the target system partition to copy the boot environment file to

. The default is the system partition for the firmware ID.

/v Enables verbose mode.

/m If an operating system loader GUID is provided, this option combines the given loader

object with the system template to produce a bootable entry. Otherwise, only the global

objects are merged.

2, Bcdedit

The Bcdedit.exe command line tool is used to modify the boot configuration data store. The startup configuration data store contains startup configuration parameters and controls how the operating system boots.

3, diskpart

Disk partition management tool. In this case, it is used to generate VHD files, partitions, formatting, etc. in the command line state.

4, imagex

WIM images Management tool, which is included in the Microsoft AIK toolkit. In this case, use it to release the install image Install.WIM file to the VHD file.

5, Windows Deployment Services

Deployment Services

3

Starting a computer with VHD has the following two scenarios: one is to deploy the VHD on a computer with an existing OS, and the other is to deploy bare metal. The biggest difference between the two is that for bare metal, since there is no OS on the hard disk, there is no Windows 7 boot file and MBR, so you must first generate a system partition and use Bcdboot to write the Windows 7 boot file to this partition; Generate a primary partition for storing VHD files. For deployment on a computer with an existing OS, it is mainly to generate a VHD file, and release the Windows 7 or Windows 2008 R2 image to the VHD hard disk, and use the BCDEDIT tool to increase the startup project.

Because VHD files are dynamic, fixed, and differential, it is recommended to use fixed-size VHD files for performance.

Deploying on an existing OS computer

Experimental environment: Using Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 SP1 to generate one The virtual machine Windows 7 and the Windows 7 7600 operating system and the AIK toolkit are installed. This virtual machine has two virtual hard disks, one c:, Windows 7 is installed; the other e: is used to generate VHD files; the optical drive is D:

Start the computer and do the following (note that the following operations are performed by the administrator BILL.xu)

1 Enter the command prompt, run DISKPART

2, enter the following command

Create vdisk file=e:\\win2007.vhd Maximum=10000 type=fixed

(There is a VHD hard disk named win2007.vhd with a size of 10000MB and a fixed size on the e disk), waiting for a while to complete.

Select vdisk file=e:\\win2007.vhd

(select e:\\win2007.vhd disk file)

Attach vdisk

(Connect to virtual disk file)

Create Partition Primary

< Br>

(Generate primary partition)

Assign Letter R

(Distribution letter is R)

Format Quick Fs=ntfs

(Using the NTFS file system to quickly format the disk), at this time there will be a hard disk with a drive letter R on my computer.