How to Create VHD of Windows 10 Installation and Use in Hyper-V

   Note

The tutorial has been updated today (20-MAR-2017). Please post all your questions about this process in this thread.

Please notice: some screenshots are from pre-release builds of Windows 10. Disk2VHD runs without any issues on and can create a VHD from any consumer and server version of Windows starting from Windows XP and Windows Server 2003.

   Information

Disk2VHD is a practical free tool by Sysinternals, since 2006 a subsidiary of Microsoft Corporation. Sysinternals is well known of their wide range of free tools to manage, troubleshoot and diagnose Windows systems and applications. As the name already tells Disk2VHD is a tool to create a Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) file of an existing Windows system. This VHDfile can then be used to create a virtual machine in Windows Virtual PC (Windows 7) and Hyper-V (Windows 8 and later).

In this tutorial we will download and install Disk2VHD on an existing Windows 10 computer, use it to create a VHD of the current Windows 10 installation on that computer and use the resulting VHD to create a virtual machine on Windows 10 Hyper-V. The virtual machine will be an exact copy of the original Windows installation apart of some hardware and drivers, Hyper-V replacing some hardware with its own virtual devices.

The virtual machine will be fully functional and contain all software, user profiles and settings which were installed and present on the real physical computer and Windows when the VHD creation process was started.

Contents:

Part One:	Install & Run Disk2VHD
Part Two:	Setup Hyper-V VM (MBR & GPT)
Part Three:	Prepare a GPT partitioned VHD
Part Four:	Run the new Windows vm

Use links above to jump to any part of the tutorial. Click screenshots to pop out, click again to expand.

Part One

 Run Disk2VHD

1.1) First, download and install Disk2VHD, a tool by Mark Russinovich at Windows Sysinternals:

Download

1.2) Extract downloaded Disk2VHD.zip to a folder, run Disk2VHD application

1.3) Name your VHD as you wish, select Save location (VHD file name), select both Use Vhdx (Hyper-V requires the file to be VHDX) and Use Volume Shadow Copy, select which drives to include in your VHD. Usually if you have done a default install and all your system files and folders are located on C: you only need to select it

In addition to your Windows partition(s), remember to select the System Reserved partition (BIOS / MBR systems) or the Recovery Partition (UEFI / GPT systems), highlighted in below screenshots!

BIOS / MBR:


UEFI / GPT:


Click Create to start creating the VHD to your selected location. Do not save VHD to any of the drives included in VHD being created!

   Note

About the Use Volume Shadow Copy selection:

Disk2VHD allows you to create a VHD of a system which will be currently used and online. Selecting Use Volume Shadow Copy will cause Disk2VHD to create a Shadow Copy of your system as it was at the very moment you clicked Create. Creating the VHD might take quite a long time but as Disk2VHD reads the information it needs from the Shadow Copy, you can continue using your Windows as usual; any changes to the system like installed software or changes to desktop will not be included in VHD because they were done after the Shadow Copy was created.

When you now click Create, you will notice that Disk2VHD does not start to write the VHD before it has finished creating the Shadow Copy (snapshotting included drives):

1.4) This may take some time. Disk2VHD shows you an estimated time when it thinks the VHD will be ready, in my case this has usually been quite accurate. Creating the VHD now for this tutorial, the resulting just over 50 GB VHD took about 15 minutes to be created:


1.5) Click Close when the VHD is ready

Part Two

 Setup Hyper-V

2.1) If not already done, enable, setup and run Hyper-V as told in Hyper-V tutorial, Part Two and create an external virtual switch as told in the same tutorial, Part Three

2.2) Create a new virtual machine in Hyper-V selecting Generation 1 (highlighted green in screenshot) in New Virtual Machine Wizard if your Disk2VHD is from a BIOS / MBR physical computer, and Generation 2 (highlighted yellow) if it is from a UEFI / GPT computer:


If you are not sure which partitioning system the PC you made VHD from is using, right click the Start button on that computer and select Disk Management, then right click Disk 0 and select Properties. Now select the Volumes tab to see if your hard disk is GPT partitioned (#1 in screenshot) or MBR partitioned (#2):


2.3) In New Virtual Machine Wizard select Use an existing virtual hard disk, browse to and select the VHD you created with Disk2VHD, click Open:


2.4) Click Next:

2.5) Click Finish:

2.6) If you made a Generation 1 virtual machine, you are ready to go. Jump to Part Four below. If your new virtual machine is Generation 2 with a UEFI / GPT VHD, continue from Part Three

Part Three

 Prepare a GPT partitioned VHD

3.1) If you start the virtual machine now, you will see it can't boot:


Shut down the VM.

3.2) Open VM settings. Change boot order making it boot from DVD (#1), add a Windows ISO image as DVD (#2), click OK to save settings:


You can use any Windows 10 version and edition ISO, it does not have to be for the version and edition installed on your new Disk2VHD virtual hard disk

3.3) Disable Secure Boot:


3.4) Start VM, boot it from DVD (ISO). Press SHIFT + 10 when you see Windows Setup prompt to open Command Prompt:


3.5) Enter command diskpart to start Windows Disk Partitioning Utility (#1 in screenshot below), enter command list vol (#2) to get list of all partitions in your Disk2VHD virtual hard disk. You will see that Disk2VHD had deleted the EFI partition (#3, by default 99 MB) making it RAW. Without it Windows on GPT partitioned disk cannot boot:


3.6) We need to format EFI partition. As we can see with list vol command (vol = volume), the EFI partition is volume 3. Select it with command sel vol 3 (#1 in next screenshot below), and format it with following command (#2):

Code:

format quick fs=fat32 label="System"

Enter the FORMAT command exactly as told! Be sure that you have selected the correct volume, the RAW one. No confirmation is asked, if you have selected wrong volume you might accidentally nuke Windows!

When done you can check again with list vol (#3) to see that the EFI partition is now correctly formatted in FAT32 file system (#4):


3.7) Enter command exit to leave diskpart

3.8) One thing missing, we have to create boot records. Before leaving diskpart I checked with list vol command to see which letter my 40 GB Windows partition on this VHD has (in diskpart drive letters are not always obvious ones). In my case now the Windows partition has letter C:

I add boot records with command bcdboot C:\Windows:


3.9) Open VM settings (File > Settings), change boot order to boot from EFI file:


3.10) That's it. Close Command Prompt, click Close button in Windows Setup, click Yes to restart.

Part Four

 Run the new Windows vm

4.1) Select your virtual machine on Hyper-V Manager, click Connect (#1) and wait until the vm windows has opened, then press Start (#2) to boot the vm:

4.2) When your Windows 10 virtual machine has booted you will see your familiar lock screen and can sign in with any existing user profile:

4.3) When signed in you'll notice everything from your physical Windows 10 installation is there in your virtual machine, installed apps working:

That's it, now you can run your physical Windows 10 installation virtualized!

Kari

Related Tutorials

---

• How to Setup and Use Hyper-V in Windows 10 for OS Virtualization
• How to Create and Use Hyper-V Checkpoints in Windows 10

Windows 11 Tutorials