Windows – Move VHD to Hyper-V

I finally solved my problem.

The BSOD states error STOP: 0x0000007B, which means inaccessible boot device.

This puts me on the way of missing drivers. Actually Hyper-V machines use IDE emulation, and I suppose only IDE drivers are available in the image, while my laptop use a eSata drive.

To solve the problem, I use DISM /add-driver command using the following procedure, on the laptop that will run the OS :

1. Mount the VHD in the disk managment (diskpart can too) --> on my computer, that add two drives, F: for the reserved system partition, G: for the windows partition

2. add all drivers of the laptop to the image by typing :

   dism /image:g: /add-driver /driver:c:\windows\inf /recurse

3. Add also the latest downloaded drivers :

   dism /image:g: /add-driver /driver:c:\somewhere\drivers /recurse

This took some minutes, but after the operation, my vhd contains all drivers. I think it's important to run the command on the target laptop to ensure all actual hardware's driver is added.

Finally, I rebooted, selected the correct boot entry, and it's boot :)

I had to reboot several times, because of the new hardware detection, but finally my system has been migrated from Virtual to Physical.

Make sure that you downloaded the actual operating system image from MSDN (Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 3), not just the service pack (Windows XP Service Pack 3 - CD).

Seems like when you search MSDN for Windows XP .iso, this service pack download pops up first in the list of results.