Native Boot VHD on USB

With my primary drive encrypted (thanks BitLocker) and my desire to be able to native boot a VHD, I went in search of a solution.

After much searching, I found a blog post: Native VHD Boot from an External USB.  I’ve decided to follow the directions and see if it works.

Below documents my deviations and distinctions to the process.

1)  Creating the VHD – I already had a baseline Windows 7 VHD.  So I made a copy to screw up.

2)  I did not change the locale information.  My VHD was already properly configured for all that stuff.

3)  Instead of using the INIFILE tool, I used my administrator command console to navigate to the folder, then executed “notepad <filename.ext>” in order to open it with administrative privileges.  This allows for the ability to save back.

      a)  For usbstor.inf and brfmcsto.inf, I went ahead and added the “; SERVICE_BOOT_START” to the end of the StartType value, and created a completed new entry at the end of the immediate list for LoadOrderGroup.

4)  So I did need PsExec (from PsTools), and executed from my administrator command console: “PsExec -i -d -s C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe”

      a)  In the new command console, I ran the command “whoami” in order to see “nt authority/system”

5)  Under the folder “R:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\” I had at least two of each folder with their own GUIDs.  So I deleted the PNF file in each.

6)  Under the folder “R:\Windows\winsxs\”, I had no PNF files to delete.

7)  I skipped creation of the differencing VHD cause I have base lines already, and really want the separation between them.

Now the process above continues to fail, because BitLocker has to go to the hard drive to get its security information, then unlock the bios, and then run the bootloader.  This is what consistently fails, and causes me the headaches of fixing my mistakes.

So I wondered, what if I partitioned my USB hard drive, and BitLocker’d the bootable partition?

Could I get a VHD on the encrypted partition to Native Boot?

Could the encrypted partition be used for boot loading, and Native Boot a VHD on the non-encrypted partition?

Apparently not.  Will update this posting if I can every get past this scenario.