Bootable Image Creator (Easy multi-boot from VHD – Virtual Disk)
Preconditions
- You need to run Windows 7 Ultimate, Enterprise, Windows 8, Windows 10
- Your system drive has to be unencrypted (no Bitlocker, Sophos or another encryption tool in place)
What’s this about?
The bootable image creator, allows you to create an additional Windows 7, Windows 8 or Windows 2012 installation in a virtual disk (vhd). It configures a separate boot entry for your system and allows you to run an isolated test or development environment on your system without hyper-v. That should give you a better performance. The tool is automating all the necessary steps to build and install this.
What’s not about?
This tool is not for creating images, which can be used with Hyper-V.
Why did I made this tool?
To configure a multi-boot environment with a VHD is a straight forward process and well documented on the internet. Unfortunately you need a large set of tools to achieve this (diskpart, bcdedit, disk manager, imagex). After searching all the tools multiple times, I decided to automate all the steps and put it together into a small application, where you don’t have to download anything else except the .iso file with the operating system.
Those are the steps the tool is automating for you:
- Creating a boot menu entry
- Download a Windows Iso image, extract the install.wim file and use imagex to apply it to the vhd. (You can do it also by burning it on the disk and afterwards do the installation to the vhd).
- Creating a VHD with partitions and file system
How to use it?
- Launch the tool and chose the Iso image which contains your desired operating system
- Select a new vhd file on a local disk drive (You want to boot from the file)
- Define the size between 30 – 200 GB
- Finally enter the title for the boot menu entry (This entry will be shown at the beginning before Windows get loaded).
- After the first boot, the Windows VM can have one blue screen due to hardwarde detection. Just start it again two times and it will work.
That’s it. Just wait until it’s done (when the tool is slow, your disk is slow ;-))
Configuration Screen:
Building Screen:
