Dual Boot: Windows 10 + Windows 10 Will Microsoft Care?

[edpalmer42]

My computer has a legal copy of Win 10 Pro.  It's an old system that doesn't support NVME boot.  I'm planning on implementing one of the workarounds to allow NVME boot and doing a fresh install on an NVME drive.  This will leave my existing system on my old drive and my new system on the NVME drive.  Normally, Microsoft doesn't care about a fresh install, but what if I end up going back and forth between the old and new versions?  The hardware fingerprints will be identical but the OS will be different.  Will Microsoft care?

Ed

[SiliconWizard]

Windows 10 is like a nasty pathogen. It doesn't care much about how and why you got it, as long as it infects your computer.

 

[edpalmer42]

So then infecting the same computer twice would be a major win!   

[50ShadesOfDirt]

It's generally better to pull the old drive, such that the OS install knows about and writes only to the new NVME drive. If you don't pull the old one, you'll sometimes have critical OS files from the new install pointing at the old drive.

Once everything is done on the install of the new OS (reusing your license key), then you can plug the old OS drive back in, accessing the files on it, if needed. Just need to make sure that the PC is booting only from the new drive, not the old one (fiddle with your bios settings).

If you try to "dual-boot" amonst the two OS's, it could get complicated and messy ... if you want a real clean solution to this, I would put the old drive in an external drive shoebox, and then it plugs in like a USB device to access files. If you really had to boot from it, a few bios setting changes, and you can boot from the external USB drive.

Hope this helps ...

[edpalmer42]

It's generally better to pull the old drive, such that the OS install knows about and writes only to the new NVME drive. If you don't pull the old one, you'll sometimes have critical OS files from the new install pointing at the old drive.

I don't see how that could happen.  I'll boot from the flash drive that I created with the OS installer on it.  Then I'll install on the new drive.  The presence of another Windows directory on another drive won't matter to the new installation.  That's the only way I can do it since I'm using a work-around to boot from the NVME drive in the first place.  It gets rather complicated.   

Once everything is done on the install of the new OS (reusing your license key), then you can plug the old OS drive back in, accessing the files on it, if needed. Just need to make sure that the PC is booting only from the new drive, not the old one (fiddle with your bios settings).

If you try to "dual-boot" amonst the two OS's, it could get complicated and messy ... if you want a real clean solution to this, I would put the old drive in an external drive shoebox, and then it plugs in like a USB device to access files. If you really had to boot from it, a few bios setting changes, and you can boot from the external USB drive.

Yes, that's probably the best way to do it.  Thanks for the reality check.

Ed

[SiliconWizard]

It's generally better to pull the old drive, such that the OS install knows about and writes only to the new NVME drive. If you don't pull the old one, you'll sometimes have critical OS files from the new install pointing at the old drive.

I don't see how that could happen.  I'll boot from the flash drive that I created with the OS installer on it.  Then I'll install on the new drive.  The presence of another Windows directory on another drive won't matter to the new installation.

Or so you think.

[Messtechniker]

It's generally better to pull the old drive, such that the OS install knows about and writes only to the new NVME drive. If you don't pull the old one, you'll sometimes have critical OS files from the new install pointing at the old drive.

I don't see how that could happen.  I'll boot from the flash drive that I created with the OS installer on it.  Then I'll install on the new drive.  The presence of another Windows directory on another drive won't matter to the new installation.

Or so you think.

I can assure you it can happen. Experienced such a messup a few times.

[m k]

Will Microsoft care?

By default Windows has a single CPU license.

So the other one is clearly an old backup.