Disk2vhd : Selection Ignored

e.g. VHD is 22G, OS is 35G but because it came from a 1TB drive, the unallocated is 900odd gigs

 

So when you goto to boot from VHD it fails, took be hours for the penny to drop it is because it considers the VHD is 1TB !!

 

And Shrink does not help, if only shrinks the partition inside, creating a dummy partition for the unallocated and shrinking does nothing, just shrinks space and shows a new unallocated.

win 8.1 / 2012R2 can't shrink a VHD only a VHDx

 

So it turns out that the system reserved partition is the least of your worries !!