Again dont speak as SMS, Instal "it"... what is it? What are you trying to do? Are you (trying to) deploying from the host, or that command is intended as in the guest? How did you create the partition? (I assume you didn't create any partition, so you have nothing to format....) As usual if you do random things you get random results, (rarely the intended one)
I’m trying to install it in a virtual machine. VMware. I don’t have a physical pc yet to test it out on yet. How do I create a partition?
Ok let restart from the beginning. What happens if you do an old school installation starting from the ISO as everyone is used since the last millennium? What you exactly did to get the vhd? Did you use winntsetup/ dism o whatever?
Did you initialized it as MBR disk, did you format it, did you make the partition active, did you use bcdboot to install the bootloader after deploying the OS on it? Again, until you familiarize well with the concept is better if you use winntsetup that does all the needed steps for you in a couple of clicks