Windows 7 Dual Boot Revisited with Bitlocker

re: Windows 7 Dual Boot Revisited with Bitlocker

Sean — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 15:58:38 GMT

Thanks for the article - very useful, as with most of your other posts. Can you give me the fully qualified URL for http://wdt? As a partner a "demo toolkit" could come in very handy. -Thanks!

re: Windows 7 Dual Boot Revisited with Bitlocker

Andy — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 23:57:30 GMT

Thanks for the tips - I tried to do something similar to this with xp and truecrypt and failed miserably. I did find out a lot more about the internals of Windows7 boot process though so the whole thing wasn't wasted.

re: Windows 7 Dual Boot Revisited with Bitlocker

Keith Combs — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 00:05:55 GMT

See step 3 and 4 above for the HOW to add an entry in the BCD store and have it show up at boot. That's the easiest way I know of. There are others.

re: Windows 7 Dual Boot Revisited with Bitlocker

Terry — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 20:29:30 GMT

Here is something I noticed while testing my VHD that I had not read anywhere:

* You can simply copy your desktop icons from your host OS (d:/users/name/desktop)

to your VHD Desktop and run the programs you have installed WITHOUT setup...

although you will have to set some preferences the first time you run them. I'm

amazed this works. I never read about it - but my experiments show it works. You

won't have the program files you have installed under "All Programs" but you can

boot into your host os and create desktop shortcuts for any programs you want

to access from VHD's without going throght the install/setup process THEN copy

them to your VHD desktop. They are even registered! I don't know how it uses this information that is almost always stored in the HOST os registry. I am confused as to how it this works. The VHD must be writing a lot more info to it's registry than hardware drivers ...but the first time you run Windows 7 from the VHD you have to go through the entire install process, even entering registration key etc. It doesn't appear to use the HOST registry.

re: Windows 7 Dual Boot Revisited with Bitlocker

Terry — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 20:20:59 GMT

There is a cool program called VHD mount that adds the option to add/remove the vhd file to boot menu when you right click on any .vhd file It's much easier than BcdEdit with the complex guid numbers on the command line.

https://brentf.com/blog/software/misc/VHDMount.exe

Your article was very informative. You seem to be the only one who knows how to use Bitlocker on a VHD.

...but as usual, I have a question:

Since a vhd runds independently of the host os, you could put your hard drive with the vhd in any computer and have your os with all your settings, options etc... but HOW would you get the boot menu option to use it? Would it be automatic or can the bios set up a boot menu?

If there is a way to boot directly in to the VHD (without the multi-boot menu) I wonder why it can't be put on a USB drive for easy use anywhere?