How not to dual boot a machine and survive

Last week Microsoft released the Windows Phone 8 SDK and I was all set to go, but there was a catch. The emulators for WP8 require virtualization running on Windows 8, and my only machine with virtualization was my production machine running Windows 7. Currently, upgrading that machine to Windows 8 is not an option. Also, since the version of the surface that supports developers has yet to be released, buying a new machine is also not an option.

While testing Office 2010, I was able to dual boot my laptop with Windows 7 and Windows Server. So that seemed to be the root to go. It did work on a previous latop, so there is no obvious reason it should not work on my new laptop that could run virtualization. I had come across several articles and the process seemed easy. The first time, I did have help from one of my fellow Visio MVPs Michel Laplane, so I was confident I could go solo and even follow some of the hints to use Disk2VHD.

So I ran Disk2VHD on the C: drive on one of my Windows 8 laptops and copied the resulting VHD to my Windows 7 laptop that supported virtualizaton. It was then time to create the boot menu, so making sure I had some breadcrumbs to return.
Bcdedit /export c:\savemystore
I started out
Bcdedit /copy {current} /d “Win 8”
This gave me
{guid}
I then used that to create the new menu
bcdedit /set {guid} device vhd=”[C:]\Vituals\W8TingRoom.vhd”
bcdedit /set {guid} osdevice vhd=”[C:]\Vituals\W8TingRoom.vhd”
bcdedit /set {guid} detecthal on
reboot
The first option on the boot menu gave me nothing, just a blank screen – no change after five minutes
The second option gave me a boot repair menu. So now I had a zero boot machine and no obvious way to recover. Thanks to my friends in OWSUG (and the fact I had done an Export), I was able to reboot
from the installation DVD to get to the CMD prompt and use BCDEdit to back out of the changes.
Bcdedit /delete {guid}
Bcdedit /import d:\savemystore
Of course, this took a bit of time since I had to go home to get the DVD. Repairs to the new Windows 8 vhd were pointless, because the machine would not boot into the old Windows 7 OS. So what did I have when it would not work?

X:\Source/bcdedit
Windows Boot Manager
--------------------
identifier
device partition=\Device\HarddiskVolume2
description Windows Boot Manager
locale en-US
inherit {globalsettings}
default {current}
resumeobject {d9c1aa99-f2dc-11e0-8f7f-fb5cec5ed47f}
displayorder {current}
{d9ba46f7-2ae5-11e2-bfae-00051b00637a}
toolsdisplayorder {memdiag}
timeout 30

Windows Boot Loader
——————-
identifier {current}
device partition=C:
path \Windows\system32\winload.exe
description Windows 7
locale en-US
inherit {bootloadersettings}
recoverysequence {d9c1aa9b-f2dc-11e0-8f7f-fb5cec5ed47f}
recoveryenabled Yes
osdevice partition=C:
systemroot \Windows
resumeobject {d9c1aa99-f2dc-11e0-8f7f-fb5cec5ed47f}
nx OptIn

Windows Boot Loader
——————-
identifier {d9ba46f7-2ae5-11e2-bfae-00051b00637a}
device vhd=[C:]\Virtuals\W8TingRoom.VHD
path \Windows\system32\winload.exe
description Windows 8 VHD
locale en-US
inherit {bootloadersettings}
recoverysequence <d9c1aa9b-f2dc-11e0-8f7f-fb5cec5ed47f}
recoveryenabled Yes
osdevice vhd=[D:]\Virtuals\W8TingRoom.VHD
systemroot \Windows
resumeobject {d9c1aa99-f2dc-11e0-8f7f-fb5cec5ed47f}
nx OptIn
detecthal Yes
So this process left me with a series of questions(other than “What did I do wrong”) and comments

1. Do a BCDEdit /Export so you can unravel your changes.
2. I have yet to come across a complete description of the components in the boot file.
3. Booting from a DVD will mean what you knew as the C: drive will not be the C: drive. So your save file may not be where you expectd it.
4. Be careful with the guids. In my example, the recoverysequence and the resumeobject appear to be identical. (In my example, the eighth character changes from a b to a 9).
5. Is there special preparation required for using a vhd created by Disk2VHD?
6. While playing in BCDEdit, how do you log your activities for future reference? (Hopefully soemthing more than a redirect of a bat file)

So, hopefully this is part one and someone will be able to do part two and point out where I went wrong, so others can avoid falling down the same rabbit hole.

John Marshall… Visio MVP       Visio.MVPs.org