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How To Guide to Install and Boot Windows 8 Consumer Preview off a VHD (Virtual Hard Disk)

Published by Rami on March 26, 2012

After the success of the first post  Guide to Installing and Booting Windows 8 Developer Preview off a VHD (Virtual Hard Disk). The ever famous Scott Hanselman posted a new article on

How To Guide to Installing and Booting Windows 8 Consumer Preview off a VHD (Virtual Hard Disk)

Why VHD?

Booting off a VHD means that the Hard Drive will be virtualized. Your Windows 8 system will run ON THE HARDWARE with your real video card, real CPU, real network card, etc. However, it will NOT run directly from your hard drive – it will run from a file on your hard drive. Windows 8 will live and run on its own personal “virtualized hard drive” which is the VHD.

Booting off a VHD is an ideal solution for trying new stuff because the only speed hit you will take is on the virtualized hard drive. Everything else is real hardware, and in case you don’t want to take any chance with dual booting or getting a slower experience inside a regular Virtual Machine.
So if you have Windows 7 now then you can “boot to a virtual hard disk (VHD)” and get all the loveliness of Windows 8 running on hardware without any risk to your hard drive. and in case you don’t like the new windows just Delete the VHD and update your boot record. very simple.

For all the enthusiasts out there, this guide will come in hand for installing Windows8 for the time being.

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