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Announcing the Windows® Image to Virtual Hard Disk Converter (WIM2VHD)

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It was my New Years Resolution that I’d do an average of 2 blog posts per week this year.  So far, I haven’t been doing a very good job of that, but I think I have a good excuse.  I’ve been very busy with preparing to release a new tool, and now, I can finally announce it.

Fine citizens of the Virtualization Nation: I present to you the Windows® Image to Virtual Hard Disk Converter, or WIM2VHD as I like to call it.

WIM2VHD is a tool that will create a bootable VHD from a specified Windows 7 or 2008 R2 WIM image (like the INSTALL.WIM file that ships on the installation DVDs) without having to run Windows Setup.  That means that you can a Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 virtual machine up and running much, much faster.

You can use these VHDs in Virtual PC, Virtual Server, Hyper-V, and … some other things, too.  We’ll talk more about that later.

You can get WIM2VHD here. 
(The release candidate has been released, too...)

I’ve done my best at creating some good documentation for WIM2VHD, which is available from the link above.  Please make sure that you read the docs.  If you have any questions, feel free to start a discussion thread at the WIM2VHD site.

[Update - MSN Video has gone offline, and the videos are no longer available. I'm looking into other options. - mikekol]

Please be aware, however, that while the underlying process of creating the VHDs is supported by Microsoft, WIM2VHD is not.

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  • Anonymous
    February 09, 2009
    PingBack from http://www.clickandsolve.com/?p=5500

  • Anonymous
    February 09, 2009
    Thanks for this nice script Mike. I did write something very similar (http://www.ravichaganti.com/blog/?p=321) but did not have lot of other options like your script has got. Thanks again.

  • Anonymous
    February 09, 2009
    Great stuff. This will make setting up new boxes a lot easier. Thanks for building this tool!

  • Anonymous
    February 09, 2009
    Feed: Virtual PC Guy's WebLog Mike Kolitz has just released "WIM2VHD".  This is a

  • Anonymous
    February 09, 2009
    Feed: Virtual PC Guy's WebLog Mike Kolitz has just released "WIM2VHD".  This is a

  • Anonymous
    February 10, 2009
    Feed: System Center Virtual Machine Manager Have you ever gone looking for one thing only to find something

  • Anonymous
    February 10, 2009
    Feed: System Center Virtual Machine Manager Have you ever gone looking for one thing only to find something

  • Anonymous
    February 11, 2009
    As far back as I can remember there have been virtual image formats for disks. In the days of floppy