Best way to make a new VHD from a Windows 10 ISO

[romf]

Thank you very much for your cool tool! I switched to it entirely, meaning with the use of the Windows VHD Boot Plugin only VHDs reside on my hard disk's ventoy partition. This way I can separate my workspaces in a clean way. I like that very much!

Now, when a new windows version is released I would like to do a clean install to a new, empty VHD. So I did the following:

1) Inside my booted Windows VHD I start the "Disk Management" tool of Windows. There I create a new VHD on the ventoy partition, attach it and initialize it. Just an example picture which tool I mean:



2) In Rufus I choose "Windows To Go" and install the image to the VHD. Just an example picture:



3) After that image creation has completed I restart to Ventoy boot menu and choose the newly created VHD to boot.
3) Then it boots and Windows configures for the first start and everything seems fine.
4) However, after a minute it fails with the following error message:



Could anybody please give me advice on how to create a bootable VHD based on a regular Windows iso? Probably I am missing some important step here.


Greetings

[Steve2926]

You must complete the installation first by rebooting.
Only then can you copy the bootable VHD.

[romf]

Thank you for your answer, Steve. I gave it a try and rebooted again into the new VHD, but it still cannot finish the boot process and displays the screen mentioned in point 4).

Update: I did some more research and followed this tutorial: https://medium.com/tech-jobs-academy/cre...549b6132a2
The VHD is again created without any problems, but when I boot into this VHD, Windows 10 shows the same error screen mentioned in point 4).

I wonder if this more a general issue. Maybe Windows is missing some driver or something to be able to boot in a VHD?
Any advice on on how to create a VHD with a working Windows 10 from an Windows 10 ISO is very welcome.

[Midas]

My procedure for this is not really Windows based, but only yesterday I (re)tested it successfully.

FYI, it was posted a while ago to https://forums.ventoy.net/showthread.php...88#pid1488.

I can only recommend you try to replicate it with VirtualBox under Windows.

Bear in mind that Window 10 Home edition will probably not work (I have never tried it) and you need a Pro or Enterprise Windows edition.

[Steve2926]

You need to allow setup to complete on a NORMAL USB drive or Virtual Machine.
The NORMAL USB must have a NORMAL MBR and PBR and contain the NORMAL BOOT FILES.
Only after several reboots when Setup has finished and you are at the Windows Desktop, you can then use SHIFT+SHUTDOWN to shutdown WindowsToGo and then copy the VHD to a Ventoy or other USB drive.

1. Install WindowsToGo to a freshly formatted USB drive (including all boot files, bootmgr.exe, BCD, etc,) - I use WinToUSB.
2. Boot from USB drive - Setup should run - set up a User Account - allow several reboots until the Desktop is reached (boot a few more times for updates, etc.)
3. At Windows Desktop press SHIFT+SHUTDOWN.
4. Copy the VHD file to your Ventoy drive

Instead of a USB drive you can use a Virtual Machine.

[romf]

You're great, thank you for your answers!

Steve2926, thank you for this idea with WinToUSB. That was basically my first tool that I used before I switched to Ventoy. WinToUSB's limitations of the free version are "Windows Home" only and it seems to be a fixed VHD, which is not the best for me. Copying the VHD from there to the Ventoy-partition is a clever idea, of course.

Midas, your setup seems to be the one that I have as well. With my old installation with just a plain Windows 10 on a hard disk like everybody else has, I used VirtualBox to create a new VHD from a Windows 10 ISO. Then I installed Ventoy on it wiping everything, reformatted the Ventoy-partition with NTFS and the put Windows VHD on it. Afterwards with the use of Windows VHD Boot Plugin I booted from the VHD - I am typing these lines inside one of my instances of the VHD. I love that setup!


So, now as I described I only have Ventoy on my disk and I start my main operating system Windows 10 from a VHD on the Ventoy partition. I thought I cannot use Virtual Box anymore. As far as I understood, one cannot use a Virtual Machine if the disk you are using is already a virtualized one (the one that Ventoy is booting my current Windows 10). But I gave it Midas' hint a try. So I tried the following:

1) Inside my running Windows-VHD I installed VirtualBox.
2) There I created a new Virtual Machine with a new VHD.
3) When VirtualBox booted the new Virtual Machine it asked for a boot device.
4) I provided the Windows 10 image, of course.
5) The install process nearly completed and after the installation of Windows it rebooted.
6) In the middle of rebooting it stated the error described in my first post in point 4.
7) If I restart the Virtual Machine the following error shows up: 



So, again, I think I cannot create another bootable VHD when I am currently inside a VHD.
I guess I need a second physical hard disk or USB-Stick with a real operating system with Virtual Box on it in order to achieve what I am trying to do: creating a new VHD based on an ISO - as long as I cannot do that in my current operating system booted from a VHD.

[Midas]

@romf: Great info. Please keep us posted if you ever solve this.

@longpanda: this thread should probably be moved to the general forum where it will help more people, IMHO.

[romf]

Thank you for your comment. Yes, I think that it might be a general problem of Windows 10 booting in a VHD for the first time. I still cannot tell whether Windows 10 itself, Ventoy or the Windows VHD Boot Plugin is to be targeted. When booting the Windows 10-VHD for the first time, one cannot get past a certain step, because Windows 10 maybe expects some kind of hardware or driver that is obviously not there when booting inside a VHD. I conclude that because I tried with two Windows versions (1909 and 20H2) as well as with different ways to extract the ISO to a VHD (Rufus, DISM, Virtual Machine with VirtualBox running inside a VHD).

I put the comment in here because I thought it would fit - as I am using the Windows VHD Boot Plugin. But you are right, it might be, that it is more a general Issue, not even with Ventoy. If I come across a solution, I'll post it here. If someone has another idea, I am happy to read a short how-to. Thank you for your ideas so far.

[Steve2926]

On reboot after Windows install, I think it tries to update the BCD so it looks for original BCD and modifies it. If it cannot find original BCD on original boot disk in 'expected' state then it errors.

Did you use VHDX?

Limitations
Native VHXD disk management support can attach approximately 512 VHDX files concurrently.
Native VHDX boot does not support hibernation of the system, although sleep mode is supported.
VHDX files cannot be nested in other VHDX files.
Native VHDX boot is not supported over Server Message Block (SMB) shares.
Windows BitLocker Drive Encryption cannot be used to encrypt the host volume that contains VHDX files that are used for native VHDX boot, and BitLocker cannot be used on volumes that are contained inside a VHD.
The parent partition of a VHDX file cannot be part of a volume snapshot.
An attached VHDX can't be a dynamic disk. A dynamic disk provides features that basic disks do not, such as the ability to create volumes that span multiple disks (spanned and striped volumes), and the ability to create fault-tolerant volumes (mirrored and RAID-5 volumes). All volumes on dynamic disks are known as dynamic volumes.
The parent volume of the VHDX cannot be configured as a dynamic disk. Store the VHDX on a basic disk.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows...ative-boot

[romf]

The following additional parameters come to my mind:

• I am using normal VHD-files because I don't need an operating system install that exceeds 128GB.
  
• At the moment I set a size of 60GB maximum at creation time, that is enough for a small installation of Windows 10.
  
• I use dynamic disks so that their size gets reduced when they are not actively booted from.
  
• At the moment I did not play around with parent or child images and not using any disk encryption.
  
• The disk is formatted with Ventoy. The Ventoy-partition created by Ventoy I had to format with NTFS.
  

So yes, maybe some check routine prevents Windows 10 to complete its installation process inside a VHD. That's what I have guessed as well because the problem occurs on two different computers using two different Windows 10 ISOs as source for the new VHD. The problem can easily be reproduced following the steps mentioned in the very first post of this thread.