Windows 7 – Booting from a VHD – Gotcha

October 17, 2009 · 1 min read

Unfortunately, after spending way too many hours trying to make this work, I just learned that you can not setup Windows 7 to boot from a VHD with Windows 7 professional, only Ultimate and Enterprise.  This isn’t a show stopper, but it’s definitely a setback.  I really wish I started with Ultimate to begin with.  This was a big waste of time.  I was getting: "License error: Booting from a vhd is not supported on this system"

For those pursuing this, here’s a good article:

http://www.markwilson.co.uk/blog/2009/10/native-boot-from-vhd-on-a-windows-xp-computer.htm

One thing that I had to change was, after “Attach VDISK”, I had to type:

SELECT PARTITION=1

I was getting an error saying no partition was selected.  I also had to change from drive x to y, as it said x was already used.

This article is part of the GWB Archives. Original Author: John Workman

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