Win 7 only supports native booting from a vhd file for the enterprise & ultimate editions only. Do the same restrictions apply to Win 8.1? Can Win 8.1 Professional be booted natively?
My Computer
System One
-
- OS
- Windows 7
In Windows® 7 and Windows® 8, a virtual hard disk can be used as the running operating system on designated hardware without any other parent operating system, virtual machine, or hypervisor
I also discovered that if you install Windows 7 Ultimate onto a VHD, you can boot just fine. However, if you install Windows 7 Home Premium or Windows 7 Professional onto a VHD, the install will work fine, but when you attempt to boot either version from a VHD you will receive the error message License Error - Booting from a VHD file is not supported on this system.
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So it appears that the Native VHD Boot feature is available in all versions of Windows 7, but that only Windows 7 Enterprise and Windows 7 Ultimate can boot from VHD.
rem -- Create_VHD.txt --
create vdisk file="C:\Test.vhd" Maximum=15360 Type=Expandable
attach vdisk
automount disable
create partition primary
online volume
format quick fs=ntfs label="Test Label"
automount enable
assign letter=M
exit
rem -- Create_VHD.cmd --
cd /d "%~dp0"
DISKPART /s Create_VHD.txt
Exit
In the newest version you can clone current Windows OS (Windows 7 or later) to a USB drive as a Windows To Go Workspace