…even after doing “Attach VHD” in Disk Management (before rebooting). After rebooting, each time I have to repeat to process of “Attach VHD” to see the drive in Explorer. And also, when I see it, I can see it only under “This PC” in the Explorer and not in the folder I placed it. Any ideas why all this happens ??
I have Windows 10 Pro 1709 on a new desktop.
First, attached virtual hard disks will always be detached when computer will be shut down (or restarted), and need to be re-attached after every boot. That's the default behaviour and there's nothing you can do for it.
A workaround is to create a DISKPART script to be run every time you sign in to Windows to attach the VHD and assign a drive letter for it.
Second, as the name say, a virtual hard disk is like a disk, behaving like HDD when attached to host machine. It will be shown as hard disk in File Explorer. If you mount / attach a VHD file E:\Data\MyVHD.vhdx on host as drive X:, the VHD file itself remains in E:\Data\MyVHD.vhdx but the virtual hard disk it contains will only be shown in File Explorer as hard disk X:.
Kari
Thanks for replying.
So if a virtual drive gets detached each boot and I want to use it as a drive for virtual machine, will I require to re-attach it after each boot before I start the system installed on that drive ??
Secondly: I don't see also the VHDx file under the folder I have placed it. Is it OK ??
If you have Windows installed on that VHD file, then it's another story. You just need to add it to Windows boot menu.
Please tell do you want to boot to that VHD to run Windows?
I am not sure I understand what you mean? The VHD file is not in folder where you created it?
Kari
Hi there
another option is to install and enable VIBOOT from Macrium Reflect.
This will boot a virtual image. However you will need W10 PRO (not Home) though.
Macrium Software | Macrium viBoot
Kari also has an excellent tutorial on this as well
@Kari
great stuff
Macrium viBoot - Create Virtual Machine using Macrium Image | Tutorials
Cheers
jimbo
You seem to mix two totally different things, running Windows from a VHD in so called native boot, and running Windows on a virtual machine.
If you want to run Windows on a virtual machine, you need virtualization software to do that. My favorite virtualization platform is Hyper-V (tutorial).
Running virtual machines does not require host machine to be rebooted.
If you want to run Windows on VHD without any virtualization software, here's how to do it:
Video is from TenForums video thread, see the video and full instructions in this post.
Running Windows on native boot VHD requires a reboot. You select from boot menu if you want to boot to your host Windows, or to Windows on VHD.
Kari
Thanks for the explanations. I was thinking it's mandatory to create first a virtual drive for VM. I saw your extensive and elaborated tutorial, both textually & visually, about Hyper-V virtualization. Is there a way in the Hyper-V virtualization process to use a saved system image (suppose Windows 7) and restore it directly as an VM system which can run, without requiring to install the Windows 7 from scratch as VM ??
Anyway, I have to decide whether do it myself following your tutorial or let the Macrium Reflect doing it.
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