Dual booting VHD with Win7 - winload.exe error

[gggirlgeek]

Hello,

I created a Windows 10(x64) To Go VHD and it boots fine on my USB and HDD but won't boot on my SSD that has Win7x64 installed. I get the error about winload.exe not passing integrity check, or a disk read error. The strange thing is that it will boot from the boot entry on my other HDD. I just can't get it to boot from bootmgr on the drive it's actually on. (So the VHD file runs fine.)

When I boot from the Windows 7 partition, and choose Win10-to-go, I get the winload.exe error. When I mark the partition with the VHD as active and boot to it I get a disk read error. When I boot from a bootmgr partition on another HDD with WinToGo.vhd in the BCD it boots fine.

All my disks are MBR NT 6.x. All partitions boot with bootmgr. I have no GPT disks and my ASUS UEFI Bios boots in legacy mode. I have no separate boot partitions. Each partition has it's own bootmgr and BCD. Win7x64 is on first SSD partition, Win10 to go VHD is on second partition.

What am I doing wrong on the SSD?

Images attached: BootIce BCD information, and Disk configuration

Update: I tried booting with VHD mounted (shown in attached image as drive F) and unmounted. No difference.

[gggirlgeek]

I figured out one solution:

I made a new Primary boot partition, in front of C:/, on the SSD and copied my Windows 7 C:\Boot folder to it then set it as Active. I made sure the partition was formatted to boot with bootmgr using BootICE. (This can be done with EasyBCD as well or in command line. I find BootICE easiest.) I edited my BCD (using BootICE) to boot the appropriate partitions and the VHD booted right up. Win7 on C boots fine too.

I guess Windows doesn't like it when there are other bootable partitions on the same drive. You have to boot Window from a separate partition if you want to multiboot from the same disk.

Strange that my 3rd disk will boot fine without a separate boot partition even though I have Windows, and the Win to go VHD on that disk. Oh, well. I found a workaround for the SSD.