How to get bootable VHD into BIOS boot menu?

tyeeman said:

I selected it and booted right into my VHD.

Very good, glad to hear that you have finally achieved your goal.

Just for the record, have you also tried to see if the VHD still boots by simulating a Disk 0 (that's where your Windows installation resides) failure?

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.

tyeeman said:

I can't take out my disk0 unless I take out the CPU heatsink and the GPU.

I see, just because it's a NVMe SSD.

However, you can always create an image file of the partition on which your Windows resides and then delete that volume or format it.
Try to see if it still does boot and then restore the image file finding your partition exactly as it was before, that way we really achieved the goal.

Otherwise, in my opinion, all the above it's something like a job left unfinished.

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.

and now my VHD shows in my F11 boot menu as a WD m.2 drive (which is where it is). I selected it and booted right into my VHD.

success. It has found the boot manager on the wd esp partition.

Not sure, it's an MSI motherboard.

it's an MSI motherboard.

Which one? You havent filled in your system specs.

If you are paranoid, try disabling disk 0.

imaging your os , deleting the partition and then restoring the image is not a good idea.

If you really must, you could image the tiny esp partition on the os disk. Then delete it.

When you are satisfied bios has successfully booted the vhd from the boot manager on the wd esp partition, restore the tiny image of the esp to the os disk .

That assumes you have adequate winpe boot media.

Msi pro Z790-A wifi ddr4

I expect you can on a consumer mobo that recent.

Nearly midnight here. Talk tomorrow.