Windows 7 Dual Boot to VHD
November 27, 2009 1 Comment
I recently got my shiny new copy of Windows 7 Professional (x64) so decided to give it a whirl. Now I was already using Vista Business (x64) and I have been quite happy with it, so will I find Windows 7 that much different?
Well, rather than migrate (which is an option with Vista) I chose to wipe and start again and the install was trivial – then I started to look into some of the new features and the one that has grabbed my attention the most is the ability to dual boot from a VHD. Why bother when you have Virtual PC to host the images you may ask? Well two reasons for me really:
- Running a Virtual PC requires the overhead of running you main OS as the host, so booting directly into it would eliminate that waste of memory, processor use etc.
- Booting directly into a VHD treats it like a real installation and so uses real driver onto the real hardware – it doesn’t behave like a Virtual machine and so you can test how installations of drivers may really affect the OS and you get a true OS performance rather than some slower interpretation.
So, here is my step by step on how I did it – because believe me it took a few goes and some to get it to work!