The reason behind writing this article is to use my Laptop (having Intel i3 4th Gen and 8 GB of RAM) as my LAB for testing new Windows Server 2016 TP4 and to do that I have to use boot from VHD option. There are multiple ways to boot your system from VHD but I don’t find a simple and effective one. Second reason is I wanted to boot the Windows Server 2016 TP4 with GUI (aka Desktop Experience), coz I like the new Windows GUI.
So, let’s get started.
First, you have to download the Windows Server 2016 TP ISO from here. Once downloaded, extract the ISO content to a folder (I have extracted to C:\MyData\WinSvr2016). Now you have to create a VHD and mount it with any available drive letter (I selected V). Use the following set of command one by one from PowerShell or Command prompt with administrative privilege.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 | diskpart create vdisk file=Drive:\FolderName\VHDName.vhd maximum 61440 type=fixed select vdisk file= Drive:\FolderName\VHDName.vhd attach vdisk list disk list volume create partition primary list volume select volume NewVolumeNumber format quick assign letter=DriveLetter exit |
