I suspect that per this article Preparing Virtual Hard Disks for Boot

I need to do one more step - "Use the bcdedit /store <path> option to specify the BCD file inside the VHD as the BCD store,"
...

Unfortunately it still won't boot as a VM.

I ran the bcdboot command as per above, and it said it succeeded. And it created an EFI directory:
83726

But when I start the VM I still get the...

I appreciate your helps and want to make sure I understand what you mean, so to clarify:
USB drive is D:, on it resides the VHDX file. When I mount the VHDX file it is mounted as E:

Thus, if I...

Thank you for the information on MS licensing. I have the appropriate licenses and if I can get the VM up and running, I have a full blown license of 7, 8.1 or 10 I can use on it but updating the...

I apologize, but like my user name says, I am a newbie to VM's. I have created a couple - mainly the new preview builds of W10 to watch and play with the new variations. However I have not been able...