China DOS Union

Does GRUB4DOS support booting the system on a VHD file?

I'm a newbie and not very familiar with GRUB4DOS, so I specifically ask seniors for advice!

Recently I saw on other forums that Native Boot of Win 7 can boot the system on a VHD file to start (but only supports Win 7 system)

And now it seems that it has been able to support differential disks and dynamic vhd disks.

This function is too convenient and practical for the installation and management of multi-systems!

But it only supports Win 7 and Win2008 systems, which is a pity!

I would like to ask:
1. Does GRUB4DOS support booting the system on a VHD file? (Please give how to edit the menu.lst boot menu)

2. If yes, does GRUB4DOS support differential disks and dynamic vhd disks? (Please give how to edit the menu.lst boot menu)

3. If the above is possible, what are the specific requirements?

I hope seniors can give detailed explanations and operation steps, requirements and precautions, thank you!

Because the internet speed is too slow, I mistakenly posted two identical posts. Please forgive me, administrator!


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——Administrator Reply

The VHDs that can be booted by GRUB have significant limitations:
1. Only support fixed - size VHDs.
2. Only support VHDs of all versions of DOS and Windows 1.0 - Windows 98 (Windows Me may also be possible).
3. For DOS and Windows 1.0 - Windows 3.x, VHDs can be made hardware - independent, while for VHDs of Windows 9x, the system on the local hard disk needs to be copied to the VHD to make it.

The boot method is to use map --mem to load the VHD. If the VHD is stored continuously, it can also be mapped directly, but this method is not recommended.

In addition, GRUB supports Gzip - compressed VHD files.

Thanks to the senior's explanation! Can the local WinXP and Win2003 systems be used?

Can I copy the system of the local WinXP and Win2003 to the vhd for production?

Then, may I ask whether the realization of this function only needs the support of the bootloader (GRUB4DOS and Native Boot), or does it need the simultaneous support of the bootloader and the operating system to be realized?

I think if only the support of the bootloader is needed, then Native Boot may be able to add support for Win98, WinXP, Win2003 systems in the future, but if it needs the simultaneous support of the bootloader and the operating system to be realized, then if I want to use this function, it can only be for systems after Win7!

Hope to get an answer! Thank you!

Originally posted by thttht at 2009-2-22 10:42 AM:
Can you use the local WinXP and Win2003 systems to copy to the vhd for production?

This requires loading the entire vhd into memory, and also requires a driver called Wupan Angel.

Originally posted by fujianabc at 2009-2-22 22:42:

This requires loading the entire VHD into memory, and also requires a driver called Wupang Angel.

Thanks to fujianabc for the patient answer!
"Requires loading the entire VHD into memory" - It seems this method is not very practical! Not as easy to use as the Native Boot method in Windows 7!
I just don't know if I can extract the VHD driver from Windows 7 and use it on XP, so that XP can also boot from a VHD file!

Originally posted by thttht at 2009-2-24 10:44 AM:
I just don't know if I can extract the vhd driver from Win 7 and use it on XP to make XP also boot from a vhd file!

This is probably impossible at all. XP can't boot from bootmgr at all.

If you're interested, you can try to port the vhd driver to Vista. Maybe there's a chance that Vista supports booting from vhd.

Got it, can GRUB4DOS boot XP in an img (hard disk image) without loading it into memory?

Originally posted by thttht at 2009-2-28 02:15 AM:
Got it, can GRUB4DOS boot XP in an img (hard disk image) without loading it into memory?

No