Creating a Windows 7 or Server 2008 R2 image for VM deployment

Creating a Windows 7 image for deployment to a virtual machine is not as straightforward as you might think. If you simply perform a standard installation, image that to a WIM with ImageX and then attempt to deploy that image, you will be left with a system that requires that the boot manager be recreated.

Just in case anyone is confused as to why the boot partition is there, it's so that you can use bitlocker to encrypt your system drive on the fly.  Bitlocker needs the unencrypted boot partition to work.

If you create a VM and insert your Windows 7 media and proceed to click Next through the entire installation wizard you will end up with a system that is actually installed on two partitions and not deployed back from WIM without requiring repair.

One tool that can be used is the Wim2Vhd tool. This is useful if you meet the client requirements and have a way to import the resulting VHD into a new VM. It performs the required repair for you.

However, I would like to avoid the situation of needing to perform the BCDBoot repair all together.

Say that you want to use ImageX (from the Windows Automated Installation Kit ) to image the Windows 7 installation to a WIM and then deploy that Windows 7 image to other virtual systems. I do not want to repair each and every time – I want to build the reference system in a way that this is not required.

The key is to prevent the default Windows 7 installation behavior of creating a System Reserved partition (which contains the necessary boot loader files) and a separate partition where the OS is installed (where there are no boot loader files).

Method One – pre-partition the virtual disk:

This is the most direct approach; in the end nothing looks unusual.

1. Create the VM from a template

2. Boot to WinPE (or mount the disk to another (helper) VM)

(An alternative to this is to boot using the installation media.  At the "Install Windows" screen (the first screen of the installer) type Shift+F10 to open a command prompt)

3. Run diskpart

a. List disk

b. Select the disk

c. Create a primary partition (you must use the entire volume)

d. Make the partition Active

e. Format the volume

f. Exit

4. Power off the VM ( or detach the virtual disk from the helper vm)

5. Attach the Windows 7 installation ISO

6. Boot to the ISO

7. Begin the installation wizard

8. Select a “Custom” installation

9. At the “Where do you want to install Windows” screen accept the volume that was previously formatted

10. Complete the wizard

11. Apply all installations and patches to your VM

12. Prepare your VM with sysprep

13. Boot the VM to WinPE

14. Create your VM image using ImageX.

Method Two – confuse the installation wizard:

I could not think of a better title for this, because really what you are doing is messing with the options allowed in the installation wizard until you get the behavior you want.

1. Create the VM from a template

2. Attach the Windows 7 installation ISO

3. Boot to the ISO

4. Begin the installation wizard

5. Select a “Custom” installation

6. At the “Where do you want to install Windows” screen

a. Select the virtual disk

b. Select “Drive options (advanced)”

c. Select “New”

d. The default should be the entire volume – Select “Apply”

e. Acknowledge the warning

f. Select and Delete Partition 2

g. Acknowledge the warning

h. Select and Extend the System Reserved partition

i. The default should be the entire volume – Select “Apply”

j. Acknowledge the warning

k. Select Next

7. Complete the wizard

8. Apply all installations and patches to your VM

9. Prepare your VM with sysprep

10. Boot the VM to WinPE

11. Create your VM image using ImageX.

The primary difference between the results of the two methods is:

· Method Two results in a deployed image where the C: volume name is “System Reserved”

Method One:	Method Two:

BOOTMGR is missing - Repairing a Windows 7 or 2008 R2 image after VM deployment

Deploying a Windows 7 image to a virtual machine is not as straightforward as you might think.
The primary issue resides in how the reference Windows 7 system is installed.
If you create a VM and insert your Windows 7 media and proceed to click Next through the entire installation wizard, you will have a working Windows 7 installation, that can be templated, it can be copied, you can do just about anything you like to it – as long as all copies involve the entire virtual disk.
Say that you want to use ImageX to image the Windows 7 installation and then deploy that Windows 7 image to other virtual systems.
If all that you did was click Next through the installation wizard or you did not customize your unattend.xml at all – you actually have a VM that has been installed with two volumes – a System Reserved volume and the volume where the actual system is installed.
The standard process is that you boot your system into the WinPE environment and you use ImageX /capture to create a WIM from a particular volume. Note the word “volume.” ImageX is a volume based tool, not a disk based tool.
The problem comes when we try to deploy this image. We boot into ImageX and /apply – then we reboot the virtual machine and we end up with the error: “BOOTMGR is missing”

The boot manager resides on the System Reserved volume, that is the extra partition that is created but was not captured by ImageX.
According to Microsoft TechNet documentation How to Perform Common Deployment Tasks with Virtual Hard Disks we need to use BCDBoot.exe to “configure the boot entry in the BCD store to be on the volume inside the VHD.” If you follow the link, the portion that we are concerned with is: “Prepare a VHD image to boot inside a virtual machine.”
To repair the VM where the image we need some type of recovery environment. We can get to a prompt to fix the applied image by any of the following ways: Boot to a WinPE 3.0 ISO, Boot to a Recovery Console using the OS installation media, attach the virtual disk to another known working Windows virtual machine.
For my example I have used the Windows Automated Installation Kit and created a WinPE 3 ISO. However, in testing I first simply attached the failing virtual disk to a working VM and performed the same commands. I also found references that booting into the Recovery Console of the installation media also works, but I did not test this. It is important to note that if you use WinPE the bit-ness of your WinPE image must match the bit-ness of the OS in the VM (32-bit to 32-bit / 64-bit to 64-bit).
The repair process:
1. Boot the virtual machine into WinPE (or attach the virtual disk to a running VM).

(An alternative to this is to boot using the installation media.  At the "Install Windows" screen (the first screen of the installer) type Shift+F10 to open a command prompt)

2. Discover the drive letter assigned to the virtual disk that is failing to boot.

3. Execute the following command (pay attention to use the correct drive letter – in my example “C:” is the letter that was assigned to the virtual disk, the WinPE system volume is “X:”).
C:\windows\system32\bcdboot C:\windows /s C:

4. Simply type “exit” to cause WinPE to shutdown and reboot into the VM. If the virtual disk was mounted in another VM, then power off the VM and detach the virtual disk before booting the imported VM.