Booting from a VHD

Hosting an OS in a virtual machine can be very useful for developers, but sometimes one pays a price in terms of performance. In Windows 7 developers can get improved performance in virtual machines by native booting a VHD. First create a Virtual PC that hosts Windows 7, then restart your computer, and finally boot directly into the VHD that contains the Windows 7 OS. When you native boot a VHD your virtual machine runs very close to the metal; performance is greatly enhanced and you have much better support for OS features that may not be available inside a standard Virtual PC.