Thank you. Well at least someone understands now, why someone, who does not have computer know-how as the center of his life, needs weeks to solve something, when he gets advice like that: "initiualizte my HDD".... Acer;: Thank you for trying, but a sentence like "Forget partitions, forget setup, forget ISOs, and learn to deploy on VHD/VHDX as everyone should do in 2024." ends conversations for me.... I only need Win 7 when I need to use one of the few softwares, that cannot be installed in Win 7. I will simply plug the powercable into the 7 SSD and am ready to go. THAT system will save me a lot of time... As it seems to me, the first thing someone who asks a question like the one in #1 wants/needs to UNDERSTAND is, that combining a MBR and a GPT causes problems. Not being told that, I wasted almost a week now, trying all kinds of unnecessary things... Once more: Thank you everybody for helping
You are obviously free to employ your time doing things in the complicate way, or you can spend 15 minutes learning something new that simplify your life, sparing HUGE amount of time each time you need a fresh os, everitime you need a backup (one file to copy), everytime you need to move your OS to a different machine, and so on. The point is that here, people does things the way common 10/20/30 years ago, which is like hauling a Ferrari with a couple of horses, just because that system worked well for centuries....
VHD/VHDX is an interesting feature : no need to partition your disk, just create a file; you can install application, maintain your system with Windows Update. However one can encounter an annoying drawback : AFAIK, it's not possible to install/update with an ISO image, it's not possible to perform an in-place installation; to install Windows the only possibility is the dism /apply-image on an empty virtual partition.
This is not true anymore In Server11/Win11/Server2022 (and maybe server 2004/2009) That said once you have more than one OS in multiboot, just boot the system A, start the system B inside hyper-V (or vmware) do the in-place upgrade, then reboot in to the system B. To upgrade the system A do the same inverting the terms of the equation. Booting the same OS natively and virtually is just one of the HUGE list of advantages that native VHDs have. But as you can see above, MDL people are allergic to lean, even when 15 minutes learning can lead in hours of spared time in the future.
I tested with Win10.The VHDX file is on the c: partition, I applyed the image and updated c:\boot\bcd; the boot menu offers to boot on the c: or the whdx. An in-place instalation on the vhdx was refused. The next step is to test for Win11.
Indeed win 10 is still (artificially) blocked. Whatever it's a next to nonexistent problem, since who use native vhdx normally has (at least) 2 systems in dual boot.
Great info, thanks. Out of curiosity, do you know if this works since the beginning in W7 or was introduced later?
Thank you. This works like a charm. Just execute Code: setx UNBLOCK_VHD_BOOT_UPGRADE 1 before executing setup.