Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Running Windows Server 2008 R2 on Windows 7 with Boot to VHD

With the MSDN release of SharePoint 2010 RTM, I am very excited to start installing it on my notebook,  running on Windows 7 64 bit with 4GB RAM.  Then there were two options that I considered.  First option was to install SharePoint 2010 directly on my Windows 7 64 bit notebook and the second option was to install it on my Windows Server 2008 R2 VHD, and then use the boot to VHD feature of Windows 7.  Both options seems good.  However for portability reason I chose the second option.  With the second option it would be very easy and quick if I need to change my notebook and it has minimal performance impact.  Microsoft estimates that Windows Server 2008 bR2 take a performance hit of only about 2% when running from a VHD.  Furthermore I can also play around with all of the Windows Server 2008 features, such Active Directory.

Below are the steps that I took in order to finally have it set up and run:
1. Download Windows Automated Installation Kit (AIK) for Windows 7 with 1,66 GB size
2. Unpack the KB3AIK_EN.iso file
3. Install the AIK by running StartCD.exe
4. In the Welcome screen, click Windows AIK Setup and follow the installation steps










5. Download and install Windows(R) Image to Virtual Hard Disk (WIM2VHD) Converter
6. Mount Windows Server 2008 R2.iso to a Virtual DVD drive using Virtual Clone Drive or other image mount tools
7. Open Command Prompt with Run as Administrator
8. Run the script to create the VHD by executing below command
CSCRIPT WIM2VHD.WSF /WIM:D:\sources\install.wim /SKU:SERVERSTANDARD /VHD:C:\VHD\WindowsServer2008R2.vhd 
9. Make sure there are no errors











10. Set up Windows 7 boot menu to boot to the VHD by executing below commands

bcdedit /copy {current} /d "Windows Server 2008 R2 VHD"

This will return a GUID. Select it using the Mark command by right-clicking in the Command Prompt and copy it to the clipboard.  Using that {guid}, execute these commands one by one:

bcdedit /set {guid} device vhd=[C:]\VHD\WindowsServer2008R2.vhd
bcdedit /set {guid} osdevice vhd=[C:]\VHD\WindowsServer2008R2.vhd
bcdedit /set {guid} detecthal on

11.  Reboot the machine

Notes:
Run bcdedit /enum to list the available boot options, including their guids
Run bcdedit /delete {guid} to remove the particular boot option

1 comment:

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