I have just upgraded my machines to Windows 7 RTM, before I did the reinstall I did full backup of my old Vista machines, of course I figured out that I had not gotten all the files out of the Vista machines before I upgraded, So I had to restore some files from the resulting .vhd backup images. But when I started Windows 7 restore, it did not recognize the backup folders.. So I thought I would just mount the vhd backup files manually, by going into Computer Management -> Disk management. But after having done that a few times, I thought it was too much hassle, so I decided to write a little PowerShell script to mount the vhd files for me.
[ps]
PowerShell function to create a script file for diskpart
and the execute diskpart with the scriptfile
function Mount-Vhd {param([String]$InputFile)
“SELECT VDISK FILE=""$InputFile”"" + “rn” + “ATTACH VDISK” | Out-File $env:TEMP\Mountvhd.txt -Encoding “ASCII”
Invoke-Expression -Command “Diskpart.exe /s $env:TEMP\Mountvhd.txt”
}
Mount-Vhd $args[0]
[/ps]
The above script has to be saved as “Mount-vhd.ps1”
But I wanted something even more simple, I just wanted to be able to right-click a .vhd file and choose open, so I created this little .reg file, that will allow you to right click a .vhd file and choose open.
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT.vhd]
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT.vhd\shell]
@=“Open VHD”
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT.vhd\shell\Open VHD]
@=“Open &VHD”
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT.vhd\shell\Open VHD\command]
@=hex(2):22,00,43,00,3a,00,5c,00,57,00,69,00,6e,00,64,00,6f,00,77,00,73,00,5c,\
00,53,00,79,00,73,00,74,00,65,00,6d,00,33,00,32,00,5c,00,57,00,69,00,6e,00,\
64,00,6f,00,77,00,73,00,50,00,6f,00,77,00,65,00,72,00,53,00,68,00,65,00,6c,\
00,6c,00,5c,00,76,00,31,00,2e,00,30,00,5c,00,70,00,6f,00,77,00,65,00,72,00,\
73,00,68,00,65,00,6c,00,6c,00,2e,00,65,00,78,00,65,00,22,00,20,00,2d,00,57,\
00,69,00,6e,00,64,00,6f,00,77,00,53,00,74,00,79,00,6c,00,65,00,20,00,68,00,\
69,00,64,00,64,00,65,00,6e,00,20,00,2d,00,66,00,69,00,6c,00,65,00,20,00,22,\
00,63,00,3a,00,5c,00,74,00,6f,00,6f,00,6c,00,73,00,5c,00,4d,00,6f,00,75,00,\
6e,00,74,00,2d,00,76,00,68,00,64,00,2e,00,70,00,73,00,31,00,22,00,20,00,22,\
00,25,00,31,00,22,00,00,00
When you import the file, all the hex values are converted back to ascii chars, which you can see under [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT.vhd\shell\Open VHD\command] of course
Here is what will be written:
“C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe” -WindowStyle hidden -file “c:\tools\Mount-vhd.ps1” “%1”
As you can see it expects the Mount-Vhd powershell file to be located in C:\tools\ in order to work. I have so far not been able to make it work, without referencing the file directly.
But when you have imported the .reg file, you can just navigate to [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT.vhd\shell\Open VHD\command] and change the path to anything you like.
You can download both files from here: http://xipher.dk/Tools/ImportVHDsettings.zip