Category Archives: Microsoft

Keynotes Technet Live online

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The keynotes from Steve Ballmer and the keynote from Daniel van Soest and Tony Krijnen are online. Both keynotes were given at the Windows 7 launch event in The Hague, The Netherlands. For more information see the link. On this page there are other interesting presentations about the optimized datacenter, security and other stuff. Presentations are in Dutch.

  • The keynote from Steve Ballmer link.
  • The keynote from Daniel and Tony link.

Booting from a VHD disk

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Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2 have a really useful feature called “VHD Boot”. With that you can boot your entire Windows out of a Virtual Hard Disk file (as those used with Virtual PC or Virtual Server).

This VHD file is mounted as a virtual disk, you can use it as a normal hard disk drive, but all the data is stored in ONE file. The machine is booted physically (unlike with Virtual PC), so you can only run one at a time, but have the full machine’s power.

The advantages are magnificent:

  • Simply copy one file (the .VHD file) and you’re entire system is included.
  • Create incremental VHD files: One VHD file can be based on another one. So if you have different systems, create a base Win7 VHD and make all others incremental. This will save a lot of disk space!

There’re also some small disadvantages 🙂

  • The .VHD booted OS needs to be Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2 or later.
  • There’s a performance decrease of about 3%.
  • Hibernate and some BitLocker scenarios don’t work
    (BitLocker CAN be used within the guest VHD though, but not on the disk where the VHD resides).
  • Windows Experience index won’t work.

So how do you install a VHD-Boot machine?

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