Comments on: How to add a Windows 7 VHD to Vista’s boot manager menu

By: stylemessiah

stylemessiah — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 04:13:16 +0000

@7
I think most people will go with a solution that doesnt cost $39.95 …

Got shares in it have you? Or just work for them?

By: Daren

Daren — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 19:19:37 +0000

With Portlock Leap Frog, you can setup a preconfigured VHD with Windows XP or Windows Vista. Portlock Leap Frog will upgrade the boot manager to support VHD boot. A dual boot configuration between XP or Windows 7 on the same partition is possible.

http://www.portlock.com/support/knowledge_base/download_windows_7_vhd.aspx

By: Kishore B

Kishore B — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 08:52:44 +0000

Sameer Dhoot has a very detailed step by step instructions with screen shots on how to replace the Windows Vista bootloader with Windows 7 bootloader giving you the ability to boot from VHD. read the post here http://intellects.in/2009/10/23/boot-from-vhd-replacing-vista-or-windows-2008-bootloader-with-windows-7-bootloader

By: Terry

Terry — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 00:16:21 +0000

After all this, when windows gets to the setup part on the VHD it craps out with a message about my Licenses and says VHD is NOT supported on this syste. It would not accept my licenses number and I had to leave that field blank.

By: Cesare Auteri

Cesare Auteri — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 20:28:57 +0000

Great Tip!!! I’m now working on Windows 7 booted from VHD. Base system is still Vista x64.
Only thing not working is Windows Experience Index

By: Michael Pietroforte

Michael Pietroforte — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 19:16:52 +0000

I didn’t try it, but I doubt somehow that it works with other Windows version than Win7. I think this is not only a feature about the boot manager, but of the operating system itself. It has to recognize the VHD as a bootable disk. Let me know if I am wrong.

By: anoymuos

anoymuos — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 14:49:52 +0000

From what I understand, this VHD booting feature should any boot any OS that’s HAL independent. So if a Windows Vista or Windows 7 image is sysprepped/generalized and booted, it should detect the real PC hardware and work! Can you test this? Also, if this feature is exclusive to Windows 7 Ultimate/Enterprise, how can they prevent users from simply copying the Ultimate bootmgr and bcdedit.exe to lower SKUs to “get” the feature?

By: Daniel Mundy

Daniel Mundy — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 01:31:37 +0000

This sounds really interesting. I’m using Windows 7 on my laptop and would love to have a Vista VHD and boot to that.

Would it be possible to install XP in a VHD and do this too…?