Windows 7 boot manager for bootable virtual hard drive not present

[voirin]

Hi, I hope someone can help me.

I required a second copy of win7 for testing purposes. I created a bootable virtual hard drive with win7 installed on it. However when I restart my pc, there is no boot manager present. I always have to press F11 to enter into the boot menu and then choose the drive to boot from.

My configuration is:
a) C: drive with win7
b) D drive with other data on it (this is also the drive where the virtual hard drive sits on)

What I did to configure a virtual drive was:
1) boot from my win7 dvd
2) went to startup recovery
3) diskpart > create vdisk file=D:\VHD-Windows7.vhd maximum=40960
4) diskpart > select vdisk file=D:\VHD-Windows7.vhd
5) diskpart > attach vdisk
6) diskpart > exit
7) then went through the rest of the win7 install

When i check on my normal win7 install:
1) system > adv system settings > advanced > startup and recovery: there is only one entry (i guess the present win7 install)
2) disk management doesnt show the any attached vhd.
3) easybcd also shows a single entry

my questions are:
1) Is there any way to get a boot manager appearing?
2) I also need to move the location of the virtual hard drive without breakign the boot process. How can I achieve this?

Any help would really be appreciated. I am worn out with this as I have spent hours searching and trying to find out how to do the above.

Thanks
Peter

 

[Josephur]

I believe you should read up on bcdboot and bcdedit commands, as there's many I'll leave you with Microsoft's reference for what you want to accomplish:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd799299(v=ws.10).aspx

 

[Joe S]

I believe the bootable VHD only works in Windows 7 Ultimate and Enterprise editions. Which version do you have?
Joe