Installed windows 10 from usb, now I can't run the VM without the usb attached

[em125390]

Hello,

I know I'm not the first to ever encounter this, but I cannot find anything here in the forums... Thank you in advance for your kindness and patience.

I have installed a Windows 10 Pro guest on my macOS host. All is well until I try to remove the install disk(the vmdk file that points to the windows 10 usb installer). Then when I try to boot I get operating system not found or bootmgr corrupt etc.

I can't find the procedure for tying this installation off nicely so I can remove the usb boot stick vmdk and use the vdi I have the working windows installation on.

I can add the vdmk back(and plug the usb stick back in) and get back into the windows guest. When it boots it asks if I'd like to boot into Windows 10 or Windows Setup. I choose Windows 10 and I boot happily into the guest OS...

How do I ditch the usb and get straight into the guest OS?

Thank you,

E

[socratis]

Moving to "Windows Guests" from "OSX Hosts". You'll have a much wider audience.

[Martin]

Did you use raw disk access to boot from the USB stick?
If I remember Windows 10 always puts the boot loader and boot menu on the first "physical disk" and probably did see the the USB stick as such in this case.
Unfortunately I don't know how to fix this...

[BillG]

I had a look a this one but have no idea what is going on. How is a .vmdk involved to install Windows in a vm?

[em125390]

Thanks for responding. I reinstalled using iso file and all is peaches.

Cheers,

E