Nearly midnight here. Talk tomorrow.

Msi pro Z790-A wifi ddr4

Not sure, it's an MSI motherboard.

That sounds like the way to go. I have to make sure my recovery UFD works and I can see my image to restore just in case my VHD doesn't boot.

No, like I said I can't take out my disk0 unless I take out the CPU heatsink and the GPU. I will do that only when disk0 really fails, knock on wood.

Before trying logon procedure I tried the procedure I mentioned above -

diskpart
select volume H
shrink desired=100
create part EFI
format fs=fat32 quick
assign letter=T
exit
bcdboot...

Exactly. That's what I posted above -

diskpart
list disk
select disk 3 (or whatever it is)
create partition EFI
format quick fs=FAT32
assign letter=A
exit
bcdboot E:\Windows /s A: /f UEFI

Thanks for the "no" answer. Sorry for the wrong terminology earlier. When I said C drive failure I meant disk0 failure. I have to rearrange my PC desk to get access to the motherboard to try this....

Thanks for the replies. Take a look at my disk management screenshot a few posts up. My VHD is on H:, when mounted the VHD is disk 4, E drive, which has an included ESP of it's own. I'm asking if...

Nice, thanks guys! One question - If my USB is a clone of my C disk with all the usual 4 UEFI partitions I believe it won't boot until I modify the BCD because the clone would be using the C disk...

Thanks. I found another thread where SIM shows how to import the usb hive and edit locally, then save. Don't have the link handy now but I'll look for it.

Hey, thanks for this answer! I'm reading lots of threads now. I am unsure of one point. Is this registry mod done on my main Win10 registry or on the usb copy registry?

Does anyone have the command to change this using a batch file? I've cloned my ssd to USB and have been trying to figure out why it won't boot and this setting must be it.

OK, that explains it and why I have to create a system partition on the disk the vhdx resides on if the disk that c drive is on fails. Thanks for your help. I'll let you know how it turns out.

- -...

So how come the vhdx currently boots without a system partition on the disk it resides on? Is the answer because it's stored on the C drive system partition currently.

This may be the critical info I need. The disk holding the vhdx does not have a system partition. Only the vhdx on that disk has it. So the vhdx will not boot unless I create a system partition.

When talking about removing C, I meant the whole m.2 drive with all 4 partitions. The vhdx will still have them all intact though.

OK, got it.

Earlier you mentioned the bcd entries are on the system partition. If I remove C, aren't they then gone? Yes, but the vhdx also has them?

Good to hear, I will try it later today.

Yes, it's a vhdx file. It's identical to my C drive but in a vhdx file. I can see all 4 partitions in disk manager when mounted. If I remove C, hopefully it boots directly into this vhdx?

I've been reading more and I guess I called it the wrong name. It would be the black and white menu, the firmware menu is probably correct. I've seen screenshots of a .vhd menu item selectable. Are...

I have a normal install of Win10 on C:. I have cloned it into a VHD on another internal disk. I ran "bcdboot F:\windows", where F is the mounted VHD drive, and the VHD was now available in the...

No, I used Image For Windows. It enables the VHD to boot fine. On another note - IFW even makes a cloned C: bootable on a USB ssd. I've done it twice and both a 2.5" ssd and an NVme drive both boot...

Just started using a VHD again after 12 years. I've been having problems making a clone of my C: to an external usb drive and having it boot from that drive, so I'm looking for other methods...