Today I’ve tested the WIM2VHD script provided by Mike Kolitz a Software Design Engineer from the Hyper-V Team at Microsoft.
In short, the script allows you to create a bootable VHD file directly from Windows 7 installation media, so you don’t need to go through the whole Windows Installation process. Once the VHD is completed, you can move it directly into your Hyper-V System and boot the operating system.
Detailed information about the script can found on the MSDN Code Gallery – Windows(R) Image to Virtual Hard Disk (WIM2VHD) Converter.
Note that you must have the Windows 7 AIK installed to run this script. The script provides a lot of optional command line options, the shortest with using all default settings is as following:
cscript wim2vhd.wsf /wim:d:\sources\install.wim /sku:ULTIMATE
If you don’t feel like trying it out yourself but want to see how things are working, watch the video below.