This being my first week at SSW , and still waiting for my nice shiny new laptop to arrive, I am sitting here at my Wife’s laptop (which is PINK, a requirement to keep the WAF high), until it arrives.
Figure: Current workspace…one wall short of working in a cupboard, but it beats trying to work with the kids underfoot.
Figure: I know its nearly Christmas, but that’s a long time between order and delivery!
SSW have sent me a .wim (Windows Image) file in the post and I really want to get a look at it before my new computer arrives.
In order to be able to create a clean install very quickly we need to convert this to a Windows 7 VHD. This way when the new computer arrives we can just move it over :) I also want to be able to reinstall my computer quickly. And what is quicker then mounting a new VHD and rebooting.
In order to achieve this there are a number of things that need done:
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Copy all of the .rar files from the DVD’s
Figure: First disk nearly finished
Figure: Third disk is taking a while
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Use WinRar to fit the 3 packages back together
Figure: Joining the wim file together is going to take a while as well. I don’t want to have to do this more than once!
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Figure: Showing the physical and Virtual disks on my wife’s pink laptop.
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Deploy Image to new VDH
In order to do this you will need imageX from the Windows 7 Automated Installation Kit . Check http://blogs.technet.com/aviraj/archive/2009/01/18/windows-7-boot-from-vhd-first-impression-part-2.aspx for more details and scenarios that will suit you.
note: You may look at the Windows(R) Image to Virtual Hard Disk (WIM2VHD) Converter as another solution, but it requires that the Windows 7 Automated Installation Kit be installed locally, where I just downloaded imageX separately and bypassed the 1gb download.
Figure: As usual, this is showing the remaining in “Microsoft Minutes”
Figure: So 10% took just over a Minute? What is the rest of the hour for?
Figure: All done, I don’t know how long it took because I got on with some other things, but it was a while!
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Figure: Detaching the VHD will allow us to copy it.
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Copy the new VHD
Figure: This will allow me to save ssw.vhd for a rainy day, and use the copy as a working install.
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Rename the copy to “SSW_001.vhd”
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Figure: Attaching a VHD is very easy
Figure:
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Add the new SSW*001.vhd to the boot list using the folowing commands:
**_C:>bcdedit /copy {current} /d “SSW_001”
C:>bcdedit /setdevice vhd=[driveletter:]
C:>bcdedit /setosdevice vhd=[driverletter:]
C:>bcdedit /setdetecthal on
*****Note:** detecthal is used to force windows to auto detect the Hardware Abstraction Layer.
Figure: Added and configured the new Image…lets try it out…
Although this took a long time with 3 long running processes, it will be a lot faster next time as I can start from step #9…
