Windows 7 virtual machine blue screen of death under Windows 8 Hyper V

I currently have Windows 7 64 bit as my primary OS.

I also have Win 8 64 bit pro on a different partition.

My intention is to create a virtual machine of my Windows 7, so that I can access it from Windows 8, and then use Win 8 as my primary OS.

I started HyperV in Win 8, created a VHDX of the Windows 7 partition (dynamic size).

When I boot into the VM, Windows BSDODs, complaining about a disk error. Unfortunately I can't seem to get much more detail than that, as it reboots very quickly.

I can boot into the Windows 7 recovery mode (not safe mode) and issue commands, attempt startup repair, none of that works.

In recovery mode, I can see that the contents of the VHDX is mounted correctly. I can create folders etc., so its not read only or anything.

It is mounted s D: though, not C:. Not sure if that's just because its in recovery mode, but if so, then I guess that could be the problem, and my question is how to alter that - is it something I need to do via BCDedit?

Or could the BSDO be due to the emulated storage hardware being very different?

Or are there any other obvious gotchas on making this scenario work?

Thank for any ideas as to how to get this working.

I created the above VDHX from Hyper V. In Windows 7 I've tried using disk2vhd and using that VHD for the VM. In that case, I immediately get an error in a console: "disk read error".

Windows7 doesn't support VHDX by default. You must first install/integrate the the Update KB982018 to the install.wim

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/982018

or use the old VHD format.

To convert physical-to-virtual (P2V) I have had excellent results with VMware vCenter Converter, although you will have to boot in Windows 7 and do the conversion while Windows 7 is running. The result VM should of course not be stored on the system drive or any other drive to be virtualized, and the process might take hours.

You can run the resulting VM using VMware Player, which is probably the simplest way.

Or you can try to convert the VMDK virtual disk of VMware to VHD. I have had good results using StarWind V2V Converter, but others are available.

This procedure worked for me, but there is no guarantee that it will always work. Physical-to-virtual is always a matter of chance.

Hmm.. coincidentally I had a similar problem today and decided to write down my misery =)

See : How to convert existing Win7 64 bit to virtual machine?

In the end it came down to VmPlayer (by default) trying to emulate the disk-image as a SCSI-device while it originally came from an installation on a SATA-disk.

Not sure if it's applicable, but worth a try...