Boot from VHD

[vishalvodro]

Inspired by an user @aaronpriest from this forum:
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Today I've tested successfully booting WIN-10_LITE.VHD from VENTOY.

Here's what I did:
1.Install Windows-10 (I tried with Lite Version) using Virtual Box on VHD (Dynamic Disk).
2.Put grubfm_multiarch.iso in VENTOY.
Optional : If you have enough space in your VENTOY Disk, then Copy VHD file else you can locate from VENTOY to your Internal HDD
3.Boot Ventoy.
4.Run grubfm_multiarch.iso
5.Locate the VHD & Boot from it.

P.S. As off now VHD Boot is possible only through grubfm_multiarch.iso, if the Developer of VENTOY could implement this feature then it would be another BANG for us...

[aaronpriest]

Did you get .vhd to work off exFat? I was using .vhdx and had to put it on an NTFS partition. Glad you got it working!

[vishalvodro]

Did you get .vhd to work off exFat? I was using .vhdx and had to put it on an NTFS partition. Glad you got it working!

Make it simple, don't use Hyper-V, because it creates additional file apart from VHDX.
Use Virtual Box and VHD only.

Tried on exFAT, didn't work. Worked only on NTFS...

[aaronpriest]

Did you get .vhd to work off exFat? I was using .vhdx and had to put it on an NTFS partition. Glad you got it working!

Make it simple, don't use Hyper-V, because it creates additional file apart from VHDX.
Use Virtual Box and VHD only.

Tried on exFAT, didn't work. Worked only on NTFS...

HyperV works fine, you don't need to copy anything but the .vhdx for G2FM and you can ignore the config file. VirtualBox crashes all the time on me and HyperV has far superior performance, so I rarely use VirtualBox for anything strenuous like installing an OS. I'd prefer to use VMWare because that has the best performance of all three, but it doesn't boot from a .vhdx directly without converting back and forth and not worth the effort.

[Edwin]

Inspired by an user @aaronpriest from this forum:
===============================

Today I've tested successfully booting WIN-10_LITE.VHD from VENTOY.

Here's what I did:
1.Install Windows-10 (I tried with Lite Version) using Virtual Box on VHD (Dynamic Disk).
2.Put grubfm_multiarch.iso in VENTOY.
Optional : If you have enough space in your VENTOY Disk, then Copy VHD file else you can locate from VENTOY to your Internal HDD
3.Boot Ventoy.
4.Run grubfm_multiarch.iso
5.Locate the VHD & Boot from it.

P.S. As off now VHD Boot is possible only through grubfm_multiarch.iso, if the Developer of VENTOY could implement this feature then it would be another BANG for us...

Hello, i try your steps but it didn't work with my kali.vhd file. It is only for window vhd ? Thank you !

[Emre028]

https://scontent.fist2-3.fna.fbcdn.net/v...e=5F517BF0

Ventoy not booting. help me !

[vishalvodro]

Inspired by an user @aaronpriest from this forum:
===============================

Today I've tested successfully booting WIN-10_LITE.VHD from VENTOY.

Here's what I did:
1.Install Windows-10 (I tried with Lite Version) using Virtual Box on VHD (Dynamic Disk).
2.Put grubfm_multiarch.iso in VENTOY.
Optional : If you have enough space in your VENTOY Disk, then Copy VHD file else you can locate from VENTOY to your Internal HDD
3.Boot Ventoy.
4.Run grubfm_multiarch.iso
5.Locate the VHD & Boot from it.

P.S. As off now VHD Boot is possible only through grubfm_multiarch.iso, if the Developer of VENTOY could implement this feature then it would be another BANG for us...

Hello, i try your steps but it didn't work with my kali.vhd file. It is only for window vhd ? Thank you !

I tried with Windows and LIVE OS only, didn't try Linux. So as per my testing, it worked flawlessly with Windows in it...

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https://scontent.fist2-3.fna.fbcdn.net/v...e=5F517BF0

Ventoy not booting. help me !

Check your boot section

[Midas]

Care to share instructions for your Win10 setup to VHD?

I have been using it forever with prior Windows versions (mainly 7, following this super tuto: https://johnpapa.net/bootoffmetal/), but when I tried to do the same with Win10 I concluded that it couldn't be done as simply: you had to use VHDX and consequently a GPT partition...

I eventually managed to do it on a modern Samsung laptop but it is a real nuisance on slightly older hardware like my trustworthy X220 Thinkpad.

[bsun99]

I tried to boot to windows 10 VHD on ntfs partition and it works.  Thanks.

[Midas]

I did, too, and it's working fine.

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Here's a more detailed account of my actions -- in what is basically a 'bare-metal' to full working OS process...

I had a HP desktop PC with Windows 7 installed in its HDD that was really sluggish and took several minutes to boot.

I also had an old Adata 128 GB (125 GiB) SSD and got an non-descript extra 4GB RAM DIMM which I added to it.

1. I booted from Ventoy LiveUSB and used it to install Linux (Mint 20) to the SSD -- I didn't touch the HDD, just in case something went wrong.

2. I booted the PC (which now felt way faster, BTW) and installed VirtualBox from the online repos.

3. In VirtualBox, I created a new VM for Windows 10 with mostly the default settings, except for choosing a VHD disk and increasing the memory to 4GB.

4. I attached a Windows 10 DVD ISO to the VM as a virtual CD-ROM and booted in VirtualBox.

5. Windows 10 installation began and I left it to finish -- again choosing mostly defaults, apart from using a local account and refusing any telemetry prompts.

6. After it finished, I closed VirtualBox and looked in its VMs folder (it's under '/home') for the newly created Windows 10 VHD, which I copied to the HDD -- it's a large file (over 10GiB in my case), so it took some time.

7. Then I rebooted the Ventoy LiveUSB into Linux, downloaded Ventoy Linux installer to the HDD, cleared the partition on the SSD and installed Ventoy into it (for details, see https://forums.ventoy.net/showthread.php?tid=579; plus I reserved some space at the end for an extra partition and over-provisioning...).

8. I fired up GParted (most modern distros include it), re-formatted Ventoy 1st partition on the SSD to NTFS (it's mandatory!), and created 2 folders in it: a 'ventoy' one (also mandatory, see 10. below) and one 'BOOTIMG' (optional, but convenient for later restricting booting from it).

9. I copied the VHD (see 6. above) from the HDD back to the SSD and placed it in the 'BOOTIMG' folder.

10. I downloaded the 'ventoy_vhdboot.img' mentioned in Ventoy's "Windows VHD Boot Plugin" page (https://www.ventoy.net/en/plugin_vhdboot.html) and placed it in the 'ventoy' folder (see 8. above).

Then I rebooted the PC, taking care of removing the Ventoy LiveUSB first, and everything just worked.

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Thanks fly out to longpanda for the excellent program, for vishalvodro for the initial instructions, and to everyone else for contributing.