Видео

This method is specifically for Windows Operating Systems only. You could combine this with the traditional dual boot method where you repartition your HDD/SSD and create a parition where you could install Linux alongside your existing Windows OS plus any Virtual Microsoft OS

This is a popular request but unfortunately, I haven't found a way to successfully do this. It doesn't seem possible to do from within the OS itself. but I did find a 3rd party utility which had this feature, but when I tried it, it caused the OS to fail to boot.

It's possible to do, but I'm not sure why anyone would want to do this. You could just move the drive to the new pc, and it should boot ok but you will likely need to install some drivers for the hardware in the new pc. Also, it depends on why you want to do this as there may be a better way. If you just want to access some of the applications and data from your Windows 8 PC, you could consider converting that Windows 8 Phyiscal disk to a virtual disk. You can convert the Windows 8 disk to a virtual disk, then use Virtualisation software on your new Windows 11 PC and create a virtual machine and attach the virtual disk to this virtual machine. You could then run your Windows 8 OS inside your Windows 11 machine. You could use Hyper-V, Oracle Virtual Box, or VMWare Workstation to run the Windows 8 VM. These are all free virtualisation apps.

@@ClickNextDemos thank you for the response. I will look into this.

Check out the video from 8:33 using this link. ruclips.net/video/jkfZoH7QHhs/видео.html It's simple batch file where you add one or more fastcopy commands that copy the data of your choice. You the built in Help tool for more information of the switches (options) you can use with the fastcopy command from the command line. Hope that helps.

Hi @stearless I didn't use Ventoy to create this dual method. The only reason you see any mention of Ventoy is becuase my Windows 11 installation media is on a Ventoy USB. I should have used a regular USB drive with Windows 11 installation media to avoid any confusion. Hope that makes sense. I'm glad you fixed it.

@@ClickNextDemos Not sure though if Ventoy is causing partitions not to have letters or it's a problem with my main system

@@stearless I re-read your original comment and understand what you mean now. Yes, you can simply assign a drive letter the partition that has the VHDX file if it doesn't already have a drive letter assigned. You can use this command from within the Diskpart utility assign letter=<volume_letter> For example, to assign the letter D: to the partition, from within the diskpart utility, you would use the following-: assign letter=D Thanks for sharing that, it will help others who want to try this out.

@@ClickNextDemos edit: again answering my own question, I just booted into the virtual system and expanded to the available unallocated space within disk management, cheers Could you explain how to expand the vhdx file afterwards, I set it to 30GB but it became full very quickly, expanded it via disk part from main OS to 50, but when I boot into it it's still 30GB, what am I doing wrong?

Maybe be possible but the tricky part is making the copied virtual disk bootable. It's probably easier to just install it from scratch.

haha, that's unfortunate but at least you know for next time. :)

Thanks, glad you liked it.

thanks

As far as I know, it’s not possible to install Linux to a virtual hard disk vhdx file using this method, otherwise I would have included it.

Yes that’s correct.

@@ClickNextDemos does this work for all brands of laptops? I have a Lenovo Legion 5 Pro

@@LuvFire It works for any laptop that runs Windows including your Lenovo Legion 5 Pro. Nice laptop by the way.

Thanks

The disk format of your real disk should not make any difference. Are you following the steps to create a new Virtual Disk, then mounting that new virtual disk during the installation process before you hit install? You need to mount your virtual disk, then click on Refresh which should then show a new blank disk in which you can install Windows 10 to.

@@ClickNextDemos I have followed everything up till 6:57, which gave me this error message: We couldn't create a new partition or locate an existing one. After that I followed the first Microsoft Blog which I found by searching the error message up. I also looked at another yt video about this error message, in which a comment suggested to try converting the disk into gpt format, leading to the error message in my first comment.

I'm not sure why its going wrong for you. You have created a brand new disk which doesn't have any data or disk type asscoiated to it, so once you have attached the virtual disk using the attach vdisk command, you should be able to click on Refresh, then select your NEW virtual disk and it should start installing it again. You could try creating a new virtual disk and try installing to that, in case the first disk you created has corrupted in some way. Good luck.

Good question about bitlocker. I haven't tried it, but no reason it shouldn't work. When you boot from the Windows installation media to install the child OS, you would need to unlock the encrypted drive first, then this would allow you to mount the virtual disk. The next question is whether the Windows installation media supports unlocking Bitlocker. drives. If it doesn't you would need mount boot.wim on the installation media and inject the bitlocker module. I've done this on WinPE media to add bitlocker support, but never tried it on Windows 11 installation media, although I expect you can do it.

Click on the link below to see the part of the video where I explain how to enable this. Around the 2 minute mark. ruclips.net/video/jkfZoH7QHhs/видео.html

If I'm correct in thinking Gparted is Linux based, then you won't be able to use this method of dual booting for that, as it only supports dual booting with Windows OS. To dual boot with Linux, you would need to use a Partition Manager to reduce the main partition of the disk, then create a new partition for the Linux installation or let the Linux installer create the partition during installation.

@@ClickNextDemos currently ive figure out to install windows and then later install ubuntu and install gparted on ubuntu instead, this seems to work, however i tried to install windows on the partition which i wanted to be MBR for campatability with recovering backups, this insanely backfired and the disk ended up being gpt anyways, then i tried again with a smaller disk, making sure its mbr before installing, this however also gave me a GPT disk, so i gave up on trying that and instead installed ubuntu like i said, now however windows always says it cant boot and its because the drive where i installed windows a second time was no longer connected and i had already flashed, now everytime windows boots it says it cant and then i have to manually make it boot the connected harddrive, i have no idea how to fix this

Yes, but if someone is already running that hardware with an earlier version of Windows, then that is even less secure.

Yes, you can select multiple folders or subfolders by pressing the CTRL key and clicking on each desired folder. Once you have selected all the folders you want to copy, right click and select FastCopy, or Drag and Drop the folders on to the destination folder. Alternatively, you could specfiy them when using the command line version. If you will be copying the folders as a regular backup then you could create a batch file specifying which files and folders to copy, as shown in the video.

@@ClickNextDemos I tried all day to copy my subdirectories from an HDD to another but it doesn't work. I have the following subdirectories: C:\Users\MyPC\Apple\MobileSync\Backup\3b62d\a1 and C:\Users\MyPC\Apple\MobileSync\Backup\3b62d\a2. I tried multiple times in FastCopy to instruct to copy C:\Users\MyPC\Apple\MobileSync\Backup\ to my external HDD which path is W:\iPhone\Backup. Once I tried with final \, once without final \, once with \*, once with only *, but nothing: the Destination folder remains EMPTY. What am I doing wrong?

It depends if your machine is a personal or work computer. If it's a work machine which are generally part of a "Domain" where usually "Group Policies" are applied to the machine during startup, then this feature can be incredibly useful to troubleshoot startup problems or delays with logon as it will give you an indication which "Policy" is causing the problem. On a personal machine, policies are unlikely to be use so not as much information will be given.

Thanks for the comments. Glad you liked it.

Glad its working well for you.

Awesome, glad it can help.

Glad I could help!

@@ClickNextDemos Thank you, it worked 100%! I even saved your video link, in case I need it again

He said that in the video

@@sfernley I'm too lazy to watch the full video

That's a great result. Glad it helped you out.

I think it will be very difficult to the hide the parent OS. There is an option in Disk Management to remove drive letters, but this is not available in this scenario. I found a 3rd party partition utility that does hide the Parent OS but this also caused the parent OS to then stop booting. I think the next best option is just change the drive letter to something like Z: which you are unlikely to use. Another option is to explore the possibility of using NTFS permissions and setting the file to "Deny" access for the user you are logged in with. Not an ideal solution, I know.

I don't think you will be able use this method with Windows XP unfortunately. I don't beleive Windows XP has the ability install to a VHD. It has a completely different installation type to that of Windows Vista and above.

Glad it helped

There is no noticeable difference in performance when running on a VHD. Regarding hiding the parent OS drive, I think you could remove the drive letter assigned to it in the disk management utility which would prevent the drive from showing up in file explorer. I’ll test it and let you know.

@@ClickNextDemos Aww, nice of you, but don't bother. I think of viruses. Imagine one "dirty" OS for gaming and risky stuff, and one "clean" OS for your business/work needs. I would not trust the "shallow" hiding via disk management utility. I think real Gurus could do some magic on an EFI console, on very specific mainboards.... I'm just looking into "OcuLink" right now, maybe one can easily swap around NVMEs like Cartridges :)

Sorry, I don't understand your comment. Windows 10 was pre installed. Windows 11 was installed as a second operating system aftwards.

Are you doing a clean install or In-Place upgrade? When you say it fails, what is the error message?

You could do that, but then the computer would be easily accesible remotely by anyone. You may not want that.