Booting a Physical Machine from a .VHD , .VHDX file

To Boot from an VHD/X file do the following:

1. From the target computer, from Control Panel click Administrative Tools, then click Computer
   Management.
2. Expand Storage, right-click Disk Management, and click Attach VHD\X.
3. In the Attach Virtual Hard Disk dialog box, click Browse. Browse to the VHD\X file located on the Hard Drive ( VHD\X must be placed on the partition where the OS resides ).
4. Click Start, right-click Command Prompt, and click Run as administrator. If
   required, click Yes.
5. At the command prompt, type bcdboot <driveLetter>:\windows and press Enter.Where <driveLetter> is the drive letter that was associated with the mounted VHD\X partition.
6. At the command prompt, type bcdedit /set {default} Description “a description about the boot entry” and press Enter.
7. Restart the host computer. The computer will restart and by default will boot into the
   VHD file.

To delete the newly created boot entry :

1. From an elevated command prompt, run bcdedit /v and note down the identifier of the boot entry that you want to remove.
2. At the command prompt, type bcdedit /delete {unique-identifier-of-the -boot-entry}
3. Voila!

This applies to Windows 7/Server 2008 and later OS Version.

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