You can format the drive of you’re laptop, copy a VHD file to the laptop, by using the Windows 7 installation DVD and than boot from the VHD file.
The hard drive will contain only one file: C:\VHD\MyVritualMachine.vhd
This post is just a summary of the post: http://www.roelvanlisdonk.nl/?p=1530 it will describe the steps, how to copy a working VHD image to an “empty” laptop and boot from the VHD file.
Notes
– VHD should run Windows 2008 R2 or Windows 7
1. Boot into you’re VHD on machine A
2. execute C:\Windows\System32\sysprep\sysprep.exe
[Out-of-Box Experience (OOBE) and check the Generalize checkbox]
3. Boot from the Windows 7 DVD on Machine B
4. Run the installation of Windows 7 only to the step where you can format the hard drive
5. Format the hard drive (now 2 partitions will be created, one 100MB and one the rest of you’re hard drive)
6. Press SHIFT F10 to open a command window during installation
7. Edit the boot manager by using the bcdedit.exe tool:
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bcdedit /copy {current} /d “MyMachine Description”
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The previous statement returns a GUID like: {aa2e3972-7a31-11df-987b-b52175dc348f}
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bcdedit /set {aa2e3972-7a31-11df-987b-b52175dc348f} device vhd=[C:]\VHD\MyVritualMachine.vhd
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bcdedit /set {aa2e3972-7a31-11df-987b-b52175dc348f} osdevice vhd=[C:]\VHD\MyVritualMachine.vhd
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bcdedit /set {aa2e3972-7a31-11df-987b-b52175dc348f} detecthal on
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bcdedit /set hypervisorlaunchtype auto
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The previous statement is only needed when the virtual machine is running Microsoft Windows 2008 R2 with the hyper-v role enabled.
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Reboot Machine B
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After rebooting you should see two entries one with the description “Windows 7” and an other with the description “MyMachine Description”
If you laptop requires SATA III drivers just copy these drivers to a USB stick, so it can be used in the mini setup run on every syspreped machine.