Solved How to use Hyper-V to upgrade a Native booted Windows 11 22H2 VHDX to 22H4?

I was wondering if I could upgrade my native booted Windows 11, version 22H2 to the newest build, version 24H2 with Hyper-V because according to TenForums, "Notice that you can update Windows on the natively booted VHD normally, install software, do everything else but you cannot upgrade it to next builds. When / if you want to upgrade, boot to your original host OS, run the VM in Hyper-V and upgrade. When done you can again boot to it using the method told in this tutorial." I have tried adding the virtual hard drive to a new Gen 2 Hyper-V virtual machine but when I boot it up, it tells me that there's no UEFI-supported file system found, and that no OS was loaded as a result of this (the picture is attached). I have also tried making a Gen 1 VM to no avail (it would show me a white flashing underscore on a black background, and if I push any key, it would move the underscore down). I would like to find a way to upgrade that VHDX to 24H2 because I'd really like to test out the new features, without breaking anything.



Any detailed help would greatly be appreciated.



Thank you in advance.


It shows me this error message:

That appears to be older information. Take a look at this thread...

Random_One0113 said:

I was wondering if I could upgrade my native booted Windows 11, version 22H2 to the newest build, version 24H2 with Hyper-V because according to TenForums, "Notice that you can update Windows on the natively booted VHD normally, install software, do everything else but you cannot upgrade it to next builds. When / if you want to upgrade, boot to your original host OS, run the VM in Hyper-V and upgrade. When done you can again boot to it using the method told in this tutorial." I have tried adding the virtual hard drive to a new Gen 2 Hyper-V virtual machine but when I boot it up, it tells me that there's no UEFI-supported file system found, and that no OS was loaded as a result of this (the picture is attached). I have also tried making a Gen 1 VM to no avail (it would show me a white flashing underscore on a black background, and if I push any key, it would move the underscore down). I would like to find a way to upgrade that VHDX to 24H2 because I'd really like to test out the new features, without breaking anything.



Any detailed help would greatly be appreciated.



Thank you in advance.


It shows me this error message:

Click to expand...

First, as @hsehestedt says, that restriction was removed a long time ago.

Secondly, you cannot just attach a native boot vhdx file to Hyper-V unless the vhdx file contains it own EFI partition.

Native boot vhdx files do not need an efi partition as they are normally dual booted with boot data being added to Host EFI.

Easiest way now is to simply boot to native vhdx file, download windows 11 iso, mount it as a drive and run setup.exe.

hsehestedt said:

That appears to be older information. Take a look at this thread...

Finally! Upgrading Windows in native boot VHD just got easier

When the Windows Insider Program was started on October 1st, 2014, I immediately decided to run only Fast Ring (later renamed as Dev Channel) builds. I was not interested in current Windows 10, later Windows 11 builds, I simply wanted to know what is coming up, how the future of Windows looks...

www.elevenforum.com

Click to expand...

Sorry, I should've looked into this further before I posted here, thanks for the help!

cereberus said:

First, as @hsehestedt says, that restriction was removed a long time ago.

Secondly, you cannot just attach a native boot vhdx file to Hyper-V unless the vhdx file contains it own EFI partition.

Native boot vhdx files do not need an efi partition as they are normally dual booted with boot data being added to Host EFI.

Easiest way now is to simply boot to native vhdx file, download windows 11 iso, mount it as a drive and run setup.exe.

Click to expand...

Thank you!

cereberus said:

as @hsehestedt says, that restriction was removed a long time ago.

Click to expand...

Only for Windows 11, you still cannot do an in-place upgrade on a native boot Windows 10 vhdx.....


...or can you? The ability to upgrade native boot seems to be a function of the setup files, not an intrinsic restriction in the Wn10 OS, or its install.esd/install.wim files. Hybrid install media to the rescue, W11 setup media with a W10 install.esd transplant:

Bree said:

Only for Windows 11, you still cannot do an in-place upgrade on a native boot Windows 10 vhdx.....


...or can you? The ability to upgrade native boot seems to be a function of the setup files, not an intrinsic restriction in the Wn10 OS, or its install.esd/install.wim files. Hybrid install media to the rescue, W11 setup media with a W10 install.esd transplant:

View attachment 116495

Click to expand...

Hello Bree,

If I may ask, how did you get the Windows 11 setup.exe to use the Windows 10 ESD?

Random_One0113 said:

If I may ask, how did you get the Windows 11 setup.exe to use the Windows 10 ESD?

Click to expand...

If you make an install USB for Windows 11 or 10 using the appropriate Media Creation tool you'll find a folder on the USB named Sources, and in this will be the install.esd file that contains all the system files needed to install Windows. All the rest of the files in the Sources folder are there to support the process of extracting Windows from the install.esd and upgrading the installed Windows. The Win11 setup files know how to do this for a native boot vhdx install, the Win10 ones don't and will tell you that you can't upgrade a vhdx install.

You simply delete the original install.esd from a Windows 11 install USB, then replace it with the install.esd copied from the Windows 10 install media. When you run Setup it will install whatever is in the install.esd. It doesn't know what version of Windows it's installing until it reads from the install.esd, and doesn't care if that turns out to be W10 or W11.

You can do it the other way round. You can put a Windows 11 install.esd in the sources folder of a Windows 10 install USB. You'll then have one that doesn't check for Windows 11 hardware requirements before installing on unsupported hardware, only for Windows 10 compatibility.