Solved Problem installing Win to a VHDX - no pagefile gets created

I have Windows 11 Pro installed on two different laptops. I wanted to install Windows 10 to a VHDX on both laptops in order to be able to dual boot between Windows 10 and 11.

On one system, everything worked flawlessly. On the second system, when I boot Windows 10, it comes up with no pagefile. If I go into settings and configure a pagefile to be automatically managed by Windows and then reboot, it still comes up with no pagefile.

Anyone have any ideas on what might cause this?

Here is a summary of the differences and similarities between the machines:

The less capable system is the one that is working. It has a Celeron CPU and only 4GB RAM, but it has a 1TB NVMe SSD. The more powerful system is a 6th gen i7 (technically not supported for Win 11), 8GB RAM, and a 512GB NVMe SSD.

Common to both systems is the fact that the C: drive is BitLocker encrypted, I am creating the VHDX on the root of C:, and the VHDX is 100GB on both systems. I also know with 100% certainty that the exact same steps were taken to create the VHDX and to deploy Windows 10 to it because those steps are scripted and the same script was run on both systems.

For the life of me I cannot figure out why I'm having the pagefile problem on the 2nd system.

Thanks, I tried the suggestions in the articles, but the registry entry referenced didn't exist in Win 10. I added it, but it made no difference.

The odd part to me is that it worked fine on one system, but not the other.

Update on the status of this issue:

@SIW2, you helped me move this forward. From the information that you pointed me to, I now know that the pagefile cannot exist within the VHDX, it has to reside elsewhere. Looking at the machine where this is working, I see that the OS in the VHDX is keeping its pagefaile on the BitLocker encrypted C: drive.

I spent a good deal of time trying to figure out what was causing the problem on the other laptop, but finally just opted to reinstall Windows 11 from scratch. After that, I redeployed Win 10 to a VHDX and this time it worked flawlessly.

Bottom line is that even though I have no idea what caused the problem, it is now fixed.