EasyBCD created entries for VHDs not booting

Flyarbox

New Member
Dell XPS 18 model 1820. Native booting Windows 8.1 Pro VHDs with NO hosting OS.

Brand new machine with no important data. Has two 256GB SSD's in it, one mSATA, one SATA. Wiping it often and doing VHD booting experiments.

Partitioned the boot SSD by hand with DISKPART with a 200GB System partition and the balance in a Primary. 2nd SSD is all one big primary.

Created first VHD by hand with DISKPART while booted from the 64bit Windows 8.1 Pro install DVD, installed Windows into the VHD, and made initial BCD with BCDBOOT referencing this VHD. Shut the machine off and back on, booted right up into a pristine blank VHD of 8.1 Pro. Configged it up with key and everything. All lovely.

Rebooted into the DVD install disk to get at a command prompt. Made a simple file copy of the new 8.1 Pro VHD, naming the file something different from the initial one.

Restarted the machine, installed EasyBCD into the original 8.1 Pro VHD, ran it, and created a 2nd BCD entry naming the copied VHD as a second boot choice to add to the BCD.

Restarted the machine and voila, the second boot VHD is listed. Picked it as the one to boot from. The machine thought about it awhile and then just returned to the boot menu without comment. Picked it AGAIN, same thing. Machine will not boot to windows from the EasyBCD-created entry.

Picked the original VHD that was made by hand from the boot menu, everything works fine.

Reboot the machine into the install environment from the DVD's, rename the original VHD to something else, and rename the COPY to the original name of the first VHD.

Reboot the machine and pick the COPY (although it now has the ORIGINAL VHD's file name), and it boots just fine.

In other words, BOTH VHD's are healthy and fine, and verified so.

So...my hand-made original BCD entry WORKS, and the EasyBCD created 2nd entry DOESN'T.

Anyone have any ideas? I'd LIKE to have SEVERAL copies of 8.1 Pro being bootable at whim, each with slightly different characteristics. I'll also be doing dangerous things that may expose me to viruses and want to be able to wipe virtual machines and tear off new copies at whim.

Obviously, I already have a method that does this (by booting to a PE or RE environment and copying and renaming VHDs to get the one I want as the target and then booting up again), but it's tedious and has lots more steps than is reasonable each time. I'd like to use EasyBCD to set this up, flinging bootable VHDs around with wild abandon. You know...like it says in the adverts.

Replies appreciated.

Steve
 
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