Tips for installing free version Win8.1 using VHD/VHDX

What are the advantages of using VHD/VHDX to install a free version of the Win8.1 system? In fact, there are 3 great advantages to be summed up. 1, do not have to separate tray partition installed Win8.1, no effect on the original system, such as dual systems, 2, compared to virtual machine + virtual disk installed Win8.1, experience a great discount, and from VHD/VHDX virtual disk installation Win8.1, you can get the same solid machine performance experience; 3, easy management, The entire Win8.1 system holds a VHD/VHDX disk file that supports loading, deletion, or unloading. Of course, the use of VHD/VHDX also has disadvantages: compared to virtual machines, to experience the VHD/VHDX version of the Win8.1 system, you need to restart the installation alone.

Below, let's quickly learn how to quickly install the VHD/VHDX version of Win8.1 with the Bing system.

Note: The Win8.1 with the Bing system still needs to be activated, because Microsoft provides the OEM manufacturer free of charge with the key, still one machine, but does not need the consumer to pay the authorization license, therefore, we also called it the Free edition Win8.1 system.

　　First, the preparatory work:

1. Win8.1 with Bing ISO system image (click to download) ImageX 6.3.9600 Image Management tool (click to download)

2, the premise: a Win7 flagship version, Win7 Enterprise Edition, Win8.1 Professional Edition/Enterprise version of the corresponding computer equipment, does not support Win7 Home Edition, Professional Edition.

It home alert: Win7 users can use the Windows Anytime Upgrade component to upgrade to the WIN7 flagship version in turn, or to a new upgrade to the Win8.1 platform.

　　Ii. Creating VHD/VHDX virtual disks

1, take the Win8.1 work environment for example. Open the Computer right button, select the Disk Management operation, create the VHD;

2, first specify the virtual disk location, such as creating a win8.1 with Bing. VHDX disk (preferred VHDX format); As for the VHD size, because it is a 32-bit system, we can choose the 10G size, recommend creating dynamic expansion;

3. Initialize the win8.1 with Bing Virtual disk, create MBR master boot record or GPT partition according to whether your computer uses traditional BIOS or UEFI boot;

4. After initializing the virtual disk, we create an e: New volume manually, as shown in the following figure.

　　Iii. deployment of VHD/VHDX version Win8.1

1, the use of virtual optical drive (Win8.1) load Win8.1 with the Bing ISO image, such as X:sourcesinstall.wim, where x represents the virtual CD drive letter;

2, decompression ImageX 6.3.9600 in the x86 version of the ImageX.exe, copy it to the local system disk Windowssystem32 directory;

3. Right-click the Start button (or combination key win+x) of the Win8.1 traditional desktop, open the command prompt (Admin) and enter the following code:

Imagex.exe/apply X:sourcesinstall.wim 1 Y:

Deploy the X:sourcesinstall.wim image to the current Y: Virtual disk, where x represents the virtual CD drive letter, and Y represents the current virtual disk letter.

4, and then wait for image deployment, if it is SSD hard drive, almost a few minutes to complete the deployment work, and finally show 100% completed.

5. Add the Boot boot menu and continue typing in the command Prompt window:

Bcdboot y:windows/s C:/L ZH-CN

Here's C: represents the current system active partition, and if there are 350MB hidden partitions, you must reassign other drive characters, such as D disk and Y to represent the current virtual disk letter.

When prompted for "boot files successfully created", that is, the bootmgr that represents the current system disk has been updated to automatically add the startup entries for the win8.1 with BING.VHDX virtual disks, as shown in the following illustration:

　　Iv. Configuration of Win8.1

When you have completed the above three steps, you can safely reboot the current system. At this point, we will see two Win8.1 startup items, one is the original hard drive system, the other is the VHDX version of the Win8.1 system, then VHDX version Win8.1 will automatically initialize the system, prepare equipment, install applications, continue to restart the completion of the remaining personalization configuration, Finally successfully entered the virtual Disk Win8.1 system, the volume also occupies 3.8G size.

When the VHDX version Win8.1 finishes configuring, the Win8.1 startup page automatically recognizes the storage path, such as my document win8.1 VHD. VHDX, as shown in the figure above.

It can be seen that the entire installation process is very straightforward, without using third-party tools to use only the ImageX image tool, System command operation, this is the VHDX version Win8.1 the most magical place. Of course, such installation is also applicable to the Win7 platform, readers can test their own friends. Therefore, we can use VHDX virtual disk, set up 32-bit + 64-bit Win8.1 dual combination, of course, in the process of using VHD/VHDX or some limitations, some features still need to manually operate, but these can not cover its most important role, Install the free version Win8.1 and try it.