RTM-Weekend! Win7, 2008 R2, Boot from VHD and more!

Yay! It’s RTM Weekend! Alright, not for everyone, because as we all are patiently waiting for August 6th as RTM hits TechNet and MSDN, but I needed to get the jump on things because I think I’m busy next weekend!

So, what does RTM weekend entail for me?  Testing was the first ground.   Testing installations on my hardware, and getting a feel for how I’ll architect my deployment model for Win7 and 2008R2!

First things first – Create bootable VHD Images to run my OS out of.    Yes, I planned to deploy my systems via Boot from VHD, so I needed to create bootable images! And for this little decision, I opted to take advantage of WIM2VHD! So, what exactly is WIM2VHD?  Well, that’s pretty simple to explain!

The Windows(R) Image to Virtual Hard Disk (WIM2VHD) command-line tool allows you to create sysprepped VHD images from any Windows 7 installation source. VHDs created by WIM2VHD will boot directly to the Out Of Box Experience, ready for your first-use customizations. You can also automate the OOBE by supplying your own unattend.xml file, making the possibilities limitless.
Fresh squeezed, organically grown, free-range VHDs – just like Mom used to make – that work with Virtual PC, Virtual Server, Microsoft Hyper-V, and Windows 7’s new Native VHD-Boot functionality!

All you need in order to be successful with WIM2VHD is:

  • A computer running one of the following Windows operating systems:
    • Windows 7 Beta or RC (or RTM)
    • Windows Server 2008 R2 Beta or RC (or RTM)
    • Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V RTM enabled (x64 only)
  • The Windows 7 RC Automated Installation Kit (AIK) or Windows OEM Pre-Installation Kit (OPK) installed.
  • A Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 installation source, or another Windows image captured to a .WIM file.

Then, simply execute a command like I did below and you’re moving along!

Create a bootable VHD of Windows 7 Ultimate
cscript WIM2VHD.WSF /wim:D:\sources\install.wim /sku:ultimate /VHD:C:\vhd\win7ult.vhd

Create a bootable VHD of Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise
cscript WIM2VHD.WSF /wim:D:\sources\install.wim /sku:serverenterprise /VHD:C:\vhd\R2Ent.vhd

This frankly takes care of most of the work on your  behalf! (Sure did for me!)

FYI: The image defaults to 40gb, so if you want to change that, use this flag /size:<vhdSizeInMb>

After this point all you need to do is bcdedit and make the system bootable and you’re set!

bcdedit /copy {current} /d “New VHD Description”
    bcdedit /copy {current} /d “Windows 7 Ultimate”
bcdedit /set <guid> device vhd=[driveletter:]\<directory>\<vhd filename>
    bcdedit /set {GUID} device vhd=[c:]\vhd\win7ult.vhd
bcdedit /set <guid> osdevice vhd=[driverletter:]\<directory>\<vhd filename>
    bcdedit /set {GUID} osdevice vhd=[c:]\vhd\win7ult.vhd
bcdedit /set <guid> detecthal on
    bcdedit /set {GUID} detecthal on

And you can perform those same exact steps again for your 2008 R2 VHD as well.   It’s not only pretty straight forward, but it’s so simple anyone can do it! After performing those steps I was up and running on a system which had no data, nothing, notta!

Now, to apply some context and depth to how I chose to use my deployment model.  I’m running on my personal Lenovo T61p, which I have a Kingston 128GB SSD disk inside of.   Because I wanted to have ‘some’ kind of Native OS in order to help work on anything should something go wrong, I opted for a 2008 Server R2 Enterprise (Core) installation.  That gives me a minimal foot print, yet an OS I can feel comfortable and confident in being able to work on and with!  

What this enables is my NOS which runs on the “C:” drive, and has a VHD directory where my images live.  However, when I’m booted into either of my BootFromVHD OS’s on here, the native SSD becomes the “D:” drive whereby I can share files between the two systems!   However, if you forget to copy something to the shared volume and need to access it, feel free to use the mount VHD feature in the Disk Management tool (or Storage in 2008)

image image

I personally prefer to mount it read-only because… I don’t want to take any risks, especially when it comes to “Anti-Virus” or other things. (Unless that is my specific intention)

Now that you have a working and operational system you’re good to go! And if you stick with a NativeOS for Maintenance reasons, you can use it to take hard backups of your VHD’s for migration to other hardware or general recovery to other points in time! (note: You can backup the un-used OS from your active OS if you’d like as well :))

So, hope you have a good RTM weekend coming up, I look forward to being able to generate and use my license keys come August 6th!

Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 have RTM’d?!?

Booyah! Did you hear that? Booyah!

And my good friend Rick Scherer has said:

Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2 have been RTM

The Windows Blog has said this:

Windows 7 Has Been Released to Manufacturing

While the Windows Server blog has said:

WINDOWS SERVER 2008 R2 REACHES THE RTM MILESTONE!

So what does this mean? Well, here is a little caption borrowed from the Windows Blogs

The RTM code will be delivered to our partners within the next few days who will then start preparing to deliver some amazing new products timed to hit at General Availability (GA) of Windows 7 on October 22nd. And going forward, I expect to be showcasing MANY of these new products here on The Windows Blog.

What does this mean for me? As soon as it hits TechNet (hopefully in the next 7 days) I’ll be reloading my production machine I use 99% of the time with Win7, using my SSD drive.  Oh, did I mention Booyah? yea!

*Update!* Word on the street is, TechNet subscribers get it on August 7th.. so there we go!

Press Release: Microsoft Releases Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2

Where’s my upgrade path for Win7 betas? Oh, there it is

Our good friends over at Engineering Windows 7 have released this little gem!

Here’s what you can do to bypass the check for pre-release upgrade IF YOU REALLY REALLY NEED TO:

  1. Download the ISO as you did previously and burn the ISO to a DVD.
  2. Copy the whole image to a storage location you wish to run the upgrade from (a bootable flash drive or a directory on any partition on the machine running the pre-release build).
  3. Browse to the sources directory.
  4. Open the file cversion.ini in a text editor like Notepad.
  5. Modify the MinClient build number to a value lower than the down-level build. For example, change 7100 to 7000 (pictured below).
  6. Save the file in place with the same name.
  7. Run setup like you would normally from this modified copy of the image and the version check will be bypassed.

clip_image002

These same steps will be required as we transition from the RC milestone to the RTM milestone.

Wait, what the hell is going on here?!

Are you seriously telling me that by going and modifying a file, I can upgrade from the Beta version, RC and eventually to the RTM release of Windows 7?    Wowza! Now all I need to do is boot from VHD, and I have myself an upgrade path which is viable for real hardened testing :)

SQL Server 2008 RTM’ing it up the place!

image

The word is out!

It’s official! SQL Server 2008 has gone RTM!

And I expect in short-order a full support for SQL 2008 with SMSQL – as things are certainly inline with this paper published in February of this year:

MICROSOFT SQL SERVER 2008:

DECISION SUPPORT WORKLOADS -1TB DATA WAREHOUSE ON IA64

So, coming soon to a test lab near me (at home) I’ll be upgrading to SQL 2008 with RTM, instead of the RC0 release I’ve been running!

Good luck upgrading, planning and sizing your environments!