System Center Technical Preview VHDs available!

Maybe old news, but still want to mention that System Center Technical Preview VHDs are available for download!

System Center Technical Preview Data Protection Manager – Evaluation (VHD) System Center Technical Preview Operations Manager – Evaluation (VHD)
System Center Technical Preview Orchestrator – Evaluation (VHD) System Center Technical Preview Service Manager – Evaluation (VHD) System Center Technical Preview Virtual Machine Manager – Evaluation (VHD)

Just use them to have a look at all the new features!
Too bad no ConfigMgr evaluation VHD is available this time.
 
Additional information:
Release Notes for System Center Technical Preview
Features removed in System Center Technical Preview
Next version of System Center Configuration Manager announced!

New System Center 2012 VHDs available

Yesterday Microsoft has released System Center 2012 VHDs, based on Service Pack 1 (beta). Thay way it's very easy to have a look at all new functionality in a demo environment. The downloads consists of files that must be extract into a single pre-configured VHD file for this System Center component. The VHD enables you to create a virtual machine to evaluate the different System Center components.

The VHDs can be found on the following locations:

System Center 2012 Service Pack 1 Beta – Data Protection Manager – Evaluation (VHD)

System Center 2012 Service Pack 1 Beta – Operations Manager – Evaluation (VHD)

System Center 2012 Service Pack 1 Beta – Orchestrator – Evaluation (VHD)

System Center 2012 Service Pack 1 Beta – App Controller – Evaluation (VHD)

System Center 2012 Service Pack 1 Beta– Service Manager – Evaluation (VHD)

Unfortunately no VHD is available for System Center 2012 Configuration Manager (ConfigMgr) with Endpoint Protection. Maybe it will be released at a later moment. Just have fun with the already available ones!

Guide to remove Windows 8 on a VHD (Virtual Hard Disk)

Last week I posted a setup for installing Windows 8 on a VHD (Virtual Hard Disk). Have a look for that here: Guide to install Windows 8 on a VHD. Now I received some questions how to make the Windows 8 setup undone, so Windows 7 will be the default Operating System again. In this blog I will give some solutions for this!

First it's possible to make Windows 7 the default Operating System again, without removing the Windows 8 installation. This is the easiest one to configure. Just boot from hard disk then, and while on the "Choose an Operating System" screen select "Change defaults or choose other options".

Then select "Choose the default operating system" to select Windows 7 as default OS again. It's also possible to change the default timer (from 30 seconds to 5 seconds) for faster boot there.

That way another boot menu will be used (from Windows 7 OS) which is must faster for booting Windows 7 AND Windows 8. I prefer this one because it's faster, not for the better menu.

Now another solution for totally remove Window8 from the boot menu. There are a few possibilities to make this possible:

• Use BCDEDIT and remove the Windows 8 boot entry
• Rebuild the boot menu from the Windows 7 DVD repair option
• Use BCDBOOT to repair boot files or create a new BCD store

It's of cource possible to remove the VHD file from hard disk. Then the boot menu will not be changed, and when selected "Windows 8" an error will follow:

Nothing to worry about, but not the better solution. It can be still part of a solution when using BCDEDIT, Windows 7 repair option or BCDBOOT. I will explain them all now.

With BCDEDIT many options comes available to add, delete, edit, and append entries in the boot configuration data (BCD) store. The BCD store contains boot configuration parameters and controls how the operating system is booted.

When not sure about BCDEDIT command first create a backup with: BCDEDIT /Export C:\BCDCOPY. Then delete the Windows 8 entry with the BCDEDIT /Delete command. For doing that the Identifier is needed. This can be found with the BCDEDIT command (without parameters):

The command for deleting Windows 8 here (in my case) is BCDEDIT /Delete {3b0c2878-9f48-11df-8e48-a2ba939022f2} /Cleanup. Let's have a try! I've deleted the Windows 8 entry and Windows 7 is booting immediately after reboot. Exactly what I want. No need to display the 30 seconds timer anymore, because there's only a single OS left.

When running BCDEDIT again my Windows 8 entry is gone, and Windows 7 will be the only OS left to boot. When I want to go back to Windows 8 again I choose: BCDEDIT /Import C:\BCDCOPY to have it all functional again.

The second solution is the Windows 7 repair option. Just start from a Windows DVD and choose "Repair your computer". Then select your OS (Windows 7) and choose "Startup Repair". The boot manager will then be repaired, and Windows 7 will be the default OS again. That way no rollback to Windows 8 is possible, because a clean boot manager is created.

 

If you click on “Startup Repair” then Windows will scan your system for common errors and will hopefully figure out that your boot manager is broken. A simple solution and maybe the most effective?

At last there is the BCDBOOT command. With BCDBOOT it's possible to copy critical boot files to the system partition and to create a new system BCD store.

 

I'm not that familiar with BCDBOOT, but for more information about this there is a TechNet post available: BCDboot Command-Line Options. It seems the most effective for creating a new BCD store or to add boot options to an existing BCD store.

For example, to create a BCD store on the default system partition with the optional locale parameter set to US English, you would use the following command: BCDBOOT C:\Windows /l en-us

Hope you have enough tools by now to remove Windows 8 from the boot menu and re-use Windows 7 as the only OS installed (if needed).

Guide to install Windows 8 on a VHD (Virtual Hard Disk)

Yesterday I posted a blog about installing Windows 8 on a virtual machine. Easy to do, but not exactly what I want. This because i think it's better to create a VHD (Virtual Hard Disk) and use the full resources of your device. Today my second install of Windows 8 takes place, this time on a VHD. The following steps are needed to get it done.

1) Download the Windows 7 USB/DVD download tool and install it on your Windows device. Download
2) Start the Windows 7 USB/DVD download tool and follow the steps. Select the Windows 8 ISO and use a empty USB device (4GB min.)

Select the Windows 8 ISO file on the hard disk

Use an empty USB device for installing Windows 8

Select the empty USB device and start/begin copying

Copy job is done and the USB device is ready to use now!

3) Open Disk Management and create a VHD file with Action > Create VHD. I've selected a dynamically expanding 20GB Virtual Hard Disk.

It's also possible to use DISKPART for that, but I'm just a GUI user. The steps needed for this will be then:

• DISKPART
• CREATE VDISK FILE="D:\VHD\Win8.vhd" TYPE=Expandable MAXIMUM=20000
• SELECT VDISK FILE="D:\VHD\Win8.vhd"
• ATTACH VDISK
• CREATE PARTITION PRIMARY (optional)
• EXIT

Just create a VHD file on your hard disk with enough free space

4) Now it's time to start from the bootable USB device. Choose USB when booting in the BIOS boot order menu. Windows 8 installation is starting then from the USB device!
5) Choose for a Custom installation, dont select an existing partition but just press SHIFT-F10 for a command window. Now choose the following commands:

• DISKPART
• SELECT VDISK FILE="D:\VHD\Win8.vhd" (Use List Disk in Diskpart to see what's drive the VHD is on. It's different then usual, so see comments for that one)
• ATTACH VDISK
• EXIT

6) Select the Windows installation screen again and press Refresh. That way the new created VHD partition becomes available.
7) Just install Windows 8 on the selected VHD partition, and let the magic happen! It will takes some time..

During installation a few reboots are needed. After that Windows 8 will be started. Select your network connection (wired/wireless) and start working immediately. There are default Apps for Twitter and Facebook available, so there's enough to do and see ;)

After the next restart a boot menu becomes available. When choose Options here, there's the choice between Windows 7 (existing OS) and Windows Developer Preview (a.k.a. Windows 8).

Both Operating Systems can be used by now, no need to use a virtual machine (or something like that) anymore. Just experience the full OS on full screen with all hardware resources available! Mine is running on 1680x1050 and wireless connection. That way Windows 8 will let you experience the true functionality.

Update: This guide can also be used for Windows 8 Consumer Preview. Just remember to write down the product key needed.

Update 1-3-2012: When the 0x000000f error is showed on first boot, and no OS can be started at all, just try the following:

• Boot from USB to be able to select your Windows (7) OS
• Remove Windows 8 from boot order with BCDEDIT
• Disable BitLocker (!)
• Try again…

Thanks to @micmyh for support on this!

Update 1-6-2012: This guide can also be used for Windows 8 Release Preview. Just remember to write down the product key needed.