More people really should learn how to use VHDX (physical virtual disks)

jimbo45 · May 3, 2023

Hi folks
These days - there's so many reasons for people especially if they play around with different builds to now start to learn how to create and install Windows on vhdx files (physical virtual files).

However these can even be useful on a VM -- so you can say boot between different language versions on a VM instead of having to create all sorts of language options on a single windows install.

Works brilliantly even on a VM !! -- the hardware is the same so no problems with activation / EULA etc etc. So only 1 VM needed instead of 2 !! - On a physical machine -- the same.

cheers
jimbo

Bree · May 3, 2023

jimbo45 said:
These days - there's so many reasons for people especially if they play around with different builds to now start to learn how to create and install Windows on vhdx files (physical virtual files).

Couldn't agree more, great for multi-booting my laptop :thumbsup:

Ghot · May 3, 2023

jimbo45 said:
These days - there's so many reasons for people to learn how to create and install Windows on vhdx files

I'll never make a virtual anything, but...
If I was younger, had more energy, and actually had a use for V-things, I'd do it in a heartbeat.

As you said, there are tons of uses for V-things, and all that's required is some Disk space and some V-knowledge. ^^

cereberus · May 3, 2023

Using VHDs is only tip of the iceberg. The real power comes with differencing disks.

Hyper-V - Use Differencing Disks

How to Use Differencing Disks in Hyper-V

www.tenforums.com

especially if multi-~~sexual~~lingual

jimbo45 · May 4, 2023

cereberus said:
Using VHDs is only tip of the iceberg. The real power comes with differencing disks.

Hyper-V - Use Differencing Disks

How to Use Differencing Disks in Hyper-V

www.tenforums.com

especially if multi-~~sexual~~lingual

If you have say different users on a desktop then that's also good too -- just give each user their own Windows system -- much easier than managing a load of accounts on the same machine -- also if a user hoses it up then its easier to fix that problem than repair the machine. Disk space these days shouldn't be a problem -- a compact W11 system doesn't "eat up" a whole load of disk space either.

On a desktop it's a single user system with multiple accounts (not a server system) so we aren't thinking about concurrent users. Only 1 user per session.

cheers
jimbo

jimbo45 · May 4, 2023

@cereberus

Thanks for that link on differencing disks -- looks great for having also a lot of VM's without having to do a load of new / clean installs.

Always glad to learn something new. On a Windows Host HYPER-V definitely is a good system for running VM's. I'm experimenting also with Windows Server (180 days free trial -- extendable up to 6 times via the rearm route so should last long enough). If I'm going to have a load of VM's or vhdx files then it makes sense to minimize the Host Windows OS -- the server editions remove most of the standard bloat etc and it's quite simple to run these servers as a "Desktop" OS.

Cheers
jimbo

barreleye · May 4, 2023

jimbo45 said:
On a Windows Host HYPER-V definitely is a good system for running VM's.

I much prefer VMware Player. It's a lot easier to configure and use, and it works better WRT things like audio and USB devices. With Hyper-V, I've also managed to screw up networking for the host system by trying to configure a switch for a VM, and I had to restore from an image file. Unlike VMware Player, you can't just jump into Hyper-V and expect good things without really knowing what you're doing. At least I can't. lol (NB: I'm sure Hyper-V is more capable WRT things like snapshots and whatnot, and it is free, while you'd have to buy VMware to get those capabilities. But Player is free and all I really need.)

Bree · May 4, 2023

barreleye said:
I much prefer VMware Player. It's a lot easier to configure and use.... (NB: I'm sure Hyper-V is more capable WRT things like snapshots and whatnot, and it is free, while you'd have to buy VMware to get those capabilities. But Player is free and all I really need.)

Not had any problem setting up a virtual switch in Hyper-V. The Default Switch gives internet access out of the box. To access other PC's on your network you need to set up a virtual switch, but the defaults when creating one will work.

For some of the old OS like WfWG 3.11 and Win '95 that Hyper-V doesn't support I prefer VirtualBox. That's also free, and I've been able to put them on my network too. Another plus is that Macrium Reflect's viBoot that can boot a Reflect image as a VM now supports using VirtualBox as well as Hyper-V.

pparks1 · May 4, 2023

barreleye said:
I much prefer VMware Player. It's a lot easier to configure and use, and it works better WRT things like audio and USB devices. With Hyper-V, I've also managed to screw up networking for the host system by trying to configure a switch for a VM, and I had to restore from an image file. Unlike VMware Player, you can't just jump into Hyper-V and expect good things without really knowing what you're doing. At least I can't. lol (NB: I'm sure Hyper-V is more capable WRT things like snapshots and whatnot, and it is free, while you'd have to buy VMware to get those capabilities. But Player is free and all I really need.)

Yeah, it took me some time to come around to Hyper-V. I'm a VMWare guy at work. I used Virtual Box for a long time personally.

When things like Docker Desktop and WSL started needing Hyper-V components is when I finally sat down and got comfortable with Hyper-V and made the switch.

cereberus · May 4, 2023

barreleye said:
I much prefer VMware Player. It's a lot easier to configure and use, and it works better WRT things like audio and USB devices. With Hyper-V, I've also managed to screw up networking for the host system by trying to configure a switch for a VM, and I had to restore from an image file. Unlike VMware Player, you can't just jump into Hyper-V and expect good things without really knowing what you're doing. At least I can't. lol (NB: I'm sure Hyper-V is more capable WRT things like snapshots and whatnot, and it is free, while you'd have to buy VMware to get those capabilities. But Player is free and all I really need.)

Ifff yoouuu likeee yourrrr vmssss runninggggg sooo slowlyyyyy LOL.

Hyper-V knock spots of the type 2 hypervisors in terms of performance.

There are lots og good tutorials on windows 10 sister site how to use it.

Hyper-V is great when VMs are Windows Pro upwards (especially insider versions). It is not so good for non Windows OSs that do not have rdp capability.

barreleye · May 4, 2023

pparks1 said:
When things like Docker Desktop and WSL started needing Hyper-V components is when I finally sat down and got comfortable with Hyper-V and made the switch.

That's what prompted me to look at Hyper-V in the first place, but VMware Player has been able to run with Hyper-V enabled for a long time now, and that's how I run it, as I do use WSL2 and also Sandbox for some things. I also thought it desirable to have one less piece of software to install, but I went back to Player partly due to crackling audio in Hyper-V, which apparently uses Remote Desktop for display, and RDP has had this issue ever since I first used it, probably back in 2004. I just ran the vanilla Hyper-V VM I created back in 2019 for Windows 10 Pro guest, and it's the same as it ever was, though I am now running it on my Windows 11 host. The other reason was no USB passthrough, which is a dealbreaker. Doing a quick google, I see there are various articles on enabling it in Hyper-V, such as this one:

How to Set up Hyper-V USB Passthrough: Short Overview

Learn how to perform Hyper-V USB passthrough. Discover the best methods, common requirements and limitations.

www.nakivo.com

I verified that Enhanced Session mode was enabled as described in the "Hyper-V USB Passthrough with Enhanced Session Mode" section, which it already was for both Server and User, and I followed the steps to enable "Other Devices" per Step 10 of that section, and it still doesn't work. If I'm doing something wrong, I have no idea what, and with VMware Player, It Just Works and always has.

cereberus said:
Ifff yoouuu likeee yourrrr vmssss runninggggg sooo slowlyyyyy LOL.

Hyper-V knock spots of the type 2 hypervisors in terms of performance.

That may be true for resource-intensive loads, but I've never found VMware Player to be problematically slow for the ways I use it. Comparing UI things like moving the mouse over Favorites in my Firefox sidebar, the highlight lags the mouse in both Hyper-V and VMware Player, so they are both perceptibly slower than using the host machine. Hyper-V does load the VM to the guest desktop around 15% faster than Player, but it's apples and oranges to some degree, as my Hyper-V VM from 2019 is bare bones in comparison to my Player VM. It hasn't been easy to test, because half the time, Hyper-V is giving me messages like "Another session for your user is blocked notifying Local Session Manager for 0 minutes, so we are unable to log you in". I have no idea why; I'm shutting the guest OS down between runs. Never seen anything like that with Player.

Also, I tend not to leave VMs running all the time, nor do I run more than one at the same time, and I find the Player UI much less fiddly to use for simple things like starting and stopping VMs. It's just a nice, relatively simple program that does everything I need as well or better than Hyper-V, and I've never killed my host networking requiring image restore when configuring VMware Player networking.

martyfelker · May 7, 2023

Well, VMware was not working on Windows, so I am trying to use Hyper-V. I have to learn how to expand a VHDX disk - I ran out of disk space trying to upgrade from Ubuntu 22.04 to Ubuntu 23.04. I really don't care for Hyper-V if I have to login to a Linux system via SSH. Either VMware or QEMU/KVM is easier for me in Linux.

cereberus · May 8, 2023

martyfelker said:
Well, VMware was not working on Windows, so I am trying to use Hyper-V. I have to learn how to expand a VHDX disk - I ran out of disk space trying to upgrade from Ubuntu 22.04 to Ubuntu 23.04. I really don't care for Hyper-V if I have to login to a Linux system via SSH. Either VMware or QEMU/KVM is easier for me in Linux.

In Hyper-V menu, click on edit disk option, select vm, select expand, choose how much to expand.

Steve C · May 8, 2023

You can use Bitlocker on a virtual drive - useful for storing sensitive data when you don't want to use Bitlocker more widely.

jimbo45 · May 8, 2023

martyfelker said:
Well, VMware was not working on Windows, so I am trying to use Hyper-V. I have to learn how to expand a VHDX disk - I ran out of disk space trying to upgrade from Ubuntu 22.04 to Ubuntu 23.04. I really don't care for Hyper-V if I have to login to a Linux system via SSH. Either VMware or QEMU/KVM is easier for me in Linux.

You can add an 'X' server on Windows, or VNC etc. That should give you access to a Linux full GUI desktop from Windows. You need to have a VNC server running on Linux too.

Note some distros have a problem with remotely accessing a full GUI desktop with the latest releases of Wayland being used rather than XORG and X11 for the video drivers. That depends on your distro. Fedora works OK -- and so does Debian but I'm not sure about Ubuntu. I don't bother on Arch Linux as I only use that as a file and multi-media server on a NAS so quite happy with SSH and on a laptop I logon locally.

Note also that sometimes there are issues with HOST/GUEST communications depending on the Host and Guests being used. In general though Bridged Networking (at least IMHO) is less of a pain than using NAT even though it needs its own separate IP address - these days with decent cable Internet I doubt whether lack of available IP addresses is a problem -- might be if running these though on a college / school campus / residence.

cheers
jimbo