While I was testing the pre-beta versions of Microsoft Project, the nice team at Microsoft created virtualized test environments to easily do testing and not worry about installing things and pre-beta software breaking your computer.  When the software was in good enough shape, our IT Department made the software available for use in a similar way.

Now that Office 2010 Beta is out, I want to use the products regularly as part of my desktop to start adopting the technology.  At the same time, I cannot afford the downtime associated with beta software potentially impacting my work schedule by crashing, a feature not working or other programs not being compatible with it.  Also, I have a decent computer – a DELL D630 to be exact – but to run a secondary virtual machine on top of my computer is way too cumbersome and will slow things down tremendously.

What I really want is a dual-boot environment so I can run the beta software locally and if need be, reboot into my standard desktop.  Moreover, I do not want to worry about my C: Drive being filled up with software that needs to be cleaned up later.  Until recently, the thought of meeting these requirements was pipe dream.

Enter Boot from VHD… If you are running Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2, you can now create a virtual machine file (one file!) and boot from it.  This means you can run Windows 7, reboot your computer and run a Windows Server 2008 R2 virtual machine as if it was installed on the computer as a completely new copy of the operating system (you can also Run WS2008R2 and boot to a Windows 7 VM).

If you have a 64-bit computer with 4-8GB RAM and want to use the Office 2010 Beta as your desktop but still want your regular desktop as a backup, I highly recommend the VHD boot option.  It will basically work like you just booted an operating system from your C: Drive and will still allow you to access all the physical drives, USB devices, networking hardware, etc on the computer.

To learn how to set up your computer to boot from a VHD, follow this really nice link to “Keith Comb’s Blahg” — not sure why the spelling but guessing he is from Bahston

http://blogs.technet.com/keithcombs/archive/2009/05/22/dual-boot-from-vhd-using-windows-7-and-windows-server-2008-r2.aspx

-Bill

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