You don't even need a "Main host" OS. Load diskpart from the installer and create and format a partition as NTFS on the physical disk. then use the create vdisk to create the first OS install disk on that ntfs partition.
Really? I totally never know that. But makes sense when you think about it. That's cool, I will definetely being doing that next time I rebuild my PC. I'm curious, did you already know that or did you try it out after watching this video?
@@ClickNextDemos watched just enough of thr video to hear you mention booting from VHDs and then fired up a virtual machine with the win10 install iso and loaded diskpart.
Just tried it out, works great. I may do an updated video on this, I think it's worth knowing. I will give you a shout out on the video, unless you tell me not to.
@@ClickNextDemos you can also setup the image inside vmware (which is free now) then convert the image to vhd/vhdx using starwind v2v converter ^^ i did this to have multiple os's on my laptop (it was quicker to build them all on my desktop where i could use shared folders to the host os to quickly share files etc)
@@ClickNextDemosokay so after having used it for a few months. This is excellent but I found one very major disadvantage of this which is that you cannot hibernate your device on the virtual windows. Would you know any way to bypass this issue?
@@julioau no not for me because I need to work on my virtual secondary windows and keep the programs open and running so that I can hibernate it and take it with me otherwise I have to spend 30 minutes just to get the programs back up and running, not just that it eats through my laptops battery to not hibernate it and I can loose all of my work if the battery dies whilst the laptop is put to sleep.
Really enjoyed this new tactic for dual booting multiple OS...Please make more videos like this I would love to see this done to a NAS Western Digital external drive.
One downside of this is that unless the host windows drive is protected the other OS can access the files. Say you downloaded a malware’virus that compromise those files. This should be used with care if intent is to protect your host OS. If direct hardware access isn’t needed then any Hypervisor to run a VM would be better.
Good point. I wonder if you could disable host OS from the Disk Management Utility so it's not accessible when booted into the other OS, I'll try it and let you know.
you can unmount the partitions / drives that you do not want in diskmgr. but a clever attacker could easily re-mount them if he knew that there were other partitions that are hidden...
What I did was to enable bitlocker on the host PC disk, files can't be accessed from the VHD windows now. Because I have the VHD on a slave disk, I removed the letter from it, working still and not visible from the host
Superb video. I run 3 OS's (11, 10 and a release preview of 11_24H2) on one HDD and have sucessfully re-edited the "descriptions" on the boot menu as per your CMD commands. Thanks, and thumbs up.
@@shiftto It was just a demo how it can be done, but here are a few examples of why you might want to run multiple versions of a Windows OS. A separate OS for work or business A separate OS for personal stuff A separate OS for gaming (where OS is optimised for gaming) A separate OS for running release previews of upcoming versions of Windows A separate OS for experimenting with software
@@ClickNextDemos This is so sick. I really wanted yo try Ameliorated Windows for gaming but It wrecks stuff I need for university(Crappy Autodesk BS). This is awesome!
Just wow! Thank you bro I have a few customers where my peoduct does not work on there windows version I always told them to use dual boot but they just don’t get it to work with this it will be 100% easier video is so easy and just such a smart and nice way todo it Thank you!
Remeber to use previous version of setup (option available on screen when you choose whether to repair your pc or install windows 11) when installing Win11 on vhdx otherwise it might give you "Windows 11 installation has failed".
Great comment. There is a bug with the Windows 11 - 24H2 installer which causes the install of Windows 11 to fail when installing to a VHD or VHDX file. But choosing the option to "Use previous verison of setup" works fine so you will need to ensure you choose this option when installing 24H2, otherwise the install will fail at the end
For me, it doesn’t work anymore starting from the point with CMD. Nothing works after that. I can still access C:, but when I try cd vhdx, it says something like its not existing . I’ve redone everything several times and have no idea what else to do. When I Go in Windows and try the command its finding it
Yes, as long as the host can see the physical disk, it can be on any disk. I would only recommend using fixed disks though, and not USB external drives.
Since windows 10 and 11 if you put 2 windows ssd in same pc last installed windows makes corrupted lastest installed first one , for example i have windows 11 ssd for main , then insert external windows 11 or 10 ssd to pc , in this case main ssd is bootmgr files corrupted , why and how? , I want to use same ssd in all pcs like a brain
It’s very different. Installing in VMware means the OS is running in virtualisation. Installing to a VHDX means the OS is running on the physical hardware (Bare metal). I haven’t found a reliable method to restrict access to the other OS unfortunately.
EasyBCD - neosmart.net/EasyBCD/ Choose the non-comercial Free version. Click on Register, then click on Download. You don't need to enter a name and email address.
It may be that your main hard drive is encrypted with bitlocker. If so you either need to use the manage-bde command to mount the encrypted volume which would then let you access the encrypted drive, or turn off bitlocker completely
Hi hi. I followed your steps the exact way you had and im on 5:54 , but it keeps on telling me "the system cannot find the path specified". Why is that?
You need to ensure you are entering the correct path and filename. For example: If the virtual disk file is called Windows11.vhdx and located in C:\VHDX then the command would look like this -: select vdisk file=C:\VHDX\Windows11.vhdx If you are still getting the error, can you see the folder and virtual disk file if you type DIR at the command prompt. Perhaps your drive is appearing as a different driver letter other that C:, it may be D: for example If you are having trouble identifying the driver letter where your virtual disk is located, try using the following command. diskpart list volume From here, you should be able to work out the drive letter of the disk that the vhdx is stored on.
@ClickNextDemos hey! I discovered that the entire problem was a corrupt operating system. I've re-installed windows 10 and now everything works! Thank you for your help!
Very cool! Thanks a bunch. Are you able to do major/feature updates like 24H2 with the VHDX installs? When I tried native boot like this several years ago, I would get error messages that updates could not be install on VHD(X?) files.
I have an old PC with Windows 8...and just purchased a new Windows 11 machine. If I move the old hard drive to the new computer, how can I set this up? I dont need to install windows as I am moving over the entire hard drive.
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.
I am new to this stuff how do I get it to run the windows boot for the new drive on restart mine just restarts into the current OS and don't get an option to install windows 10 to the new drive before I boot
Awesome video. I’ve done a win 10 > 11 upgrade and it works but BSOD’s under certain circumstances. So I’ll restore w10 and do a separate virtual drive like you. One concern if henceforth I only use the win11 install because w10 is soon dying will there be a security concern since w10 was the parent installation host ??
I got problem - windows won't start installing - giving me message We couldn't create a new partition or locate existing one - can't pass this - I was even trying to create new partition and format but it stuck on this
You should still see the host OS when booted into a guest OS. Just browse to the other disk and navigate to the folder you want to access. You may be prompted to grant yourself access to the files.
Technically yes, but it's not normally noticeable. If you really require the best possible performance from the disk (for gaming or video editing for example), then you could install a second disk with a traditional Windows partition and install your games or data on that physical disk.
Ensure you are using the correct file path for your VHDX file and also ensure that a drive letter is assigned to the physical disk (it isn't always). In Diskpart... Type "list volume" and press ENTER to see a list of volumes. You should see the volume which contains your VHDX. You can identify this by the file size as it will most likely be the biggest size. See which drive letter has been assigned (it's not always C:) If the volume does not have a drive letter assigned, you can do the following-: Type "Select volume x" and press ENTER. Where x = the number of the volume. Type "Assign" and press ENTER. This will then assign a drive letter. Then mount the VHDX by doing the following (Change C: to whatever drive letter yours is) select vdisk file=C:\Folder\Filename.VHDX attach vdisk
When I load into windows 10 from windows 11, my windows 10 does not have wifi. Any idea how I can fix this? My lan cable doesn’t work so I can’t use lan
I suspect you need to install a driver for the Wi-Fi adapter. Check Device Manager in your Windows 11 system to see what your Wi-Fi adapter is called. Then download the driver (use google to search for the download). Save the driver software somewhere, then boot into Windows 10 and install the driver.
I did everything you said until I tried to attach the vhdx folder in cmd. When I go to c: and type cd vhdx the error I get is the system cannot find the path specified. Can someone help me to sort this out please
It may be that the disk containg your VHD file is coming up on a different drive letter other than C: or it doesn't have a drive letter assigned at all. At the command prompt..... Type "Diskpart" and press ENTER Type "List Volume" and press ENTER This will list the volumes including your disk that contains the VHD file. See what letter it has assigned to it, it may be a different letter. You can discover which volume is the disk by looking at the size, it will probably be the one with the biggest size. If no letter is assigned at all, then do the following -: Type "select volume x" and press ENTER. (where x is the volume number of your disk containing the VHD file). For example: select volume 0 Type "assign" and press ENTER. A drive letter will then be assigned to your disk/volume. Type "List volume" and pres ENTER to list the volumes again. This time, you should see a driver letter attached, e.g C:\ D:\ or E:\
Not that I know of. You need to be able to mount the VHDX file during the Linux setup and I don't it's possible to do this with Linux installers. So Windows OS only I'm afriad.
Wow, never thought about this way of dual booting before. Thank you very much! Could you also explain how to decrease the size of the virtual disk? You said it is harder, but what if i need to? And can virtual disks be used for linux too and how?
Not that I know of. You need to be able to mount the VHDX file during the Linux setup and I don't it's possible to do this with Linux installers. So Windows OS only I'm afriad.
this is very good idea. however, If i would try to create a vhd disk on an external "nvme enclosure disk", usb key or an SD card... i cant later on point this wirtyal disk for installation. I also tried to first install and later copy this vhd disk to external drive but then I have no idea how to point bootloader to read from this external drive. is there a way to do that?
Hello, if the Host OS is encrypted using bitlocker, will the guest OS be automatically bitlocked since it's on the same drive? I want to make each OS to be isolated through different bitlocker keys, is that possible on the same real drive?
Yes, if your host drive is encrypted with bitlocker then the vhd files would be encrypted. You would need to mount the bitlocker drive during the setup process. Ive never tested it so not sure how well that would work. In your scenario it may be better to install a second drive and put your vhds on that then enable bitlocker on the individual vhds. Again I’ve never tried but would be interested to see if it would work.
I followed and did the same as you, but i have win11 and wish to download win10, after booting into wins 10 install and opening cmd, i type c: then cd vhdx but i get “the system cannot find the path specified”. I even went back to main drive and confirmed the path specified, tried renaming it and still nothing. Can anyone please help
Follow the same process but boot up with the aomei boot media instead of windows boot media. There is an option to open a command prompt where you can then mount your vhdx file. Then restore your image from the aomei restore wizard.
@@ClickNextDemos I have save my current os backup but that backup contain three partition 1st one is EFI System partition 100MB 2nd is Recovery partition 641mb and the last main os drive is 300 gb now i have tried to install the os only and its not working it require other two partitions to boot
This was a very well produced video. However, you never mentioned about the recovery partition that was created after installing Windows 11 as a secondary OS. I had to figure out how to delete that first before I could increase the capacity of the virtual disk. It took me forever to figure out how to do that. Once I did everything was fine.
This did not work for me. It refused to allow the installation, and I can't find anything online that would indicate why. The logs aren't much help either.
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.
I run into some error when locating the vhdx file, saying I should turn off bitlocker. If I decide to turn it on again would i still be able to boot from the vhdx drive?
You don’t need to turn off bitlocker but you will need to mount the encrypted drive after you boot from the USB media and open the command prompt. You need to use a command called manage-bde to mount the encrypted drive. You will need your bitlocker recovery key for this. Google manage-bde for how to use it
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.
Sir i am using win 8.1 bootable pendrive but while selecting "cd vhdx" its showing me error that the system cannot find the path specified.... Btw m using windows 10 and trying to install win 8.1
not sure, but he did mention that windows os with no uefi support won't work. so, maybe something similar in case of a linux distro? i can't tell, need to test. for now i'm going with virtualbox.
I've just had a go installing Mint with WIn11 as the Host OS. I hit a roadblock attaching the vhdx disk during install. Install happens in a linux live environment instead of Windows live environment so the commands shown in this video didn't work. Attempt aborted, more research needed...
I wonder if you had a way to just expand the Linux ISO onto the VMDK under Windows and then reboot. Not sure if that would work. Probably have to do some bcdedit work 🤔
It may be possible, but not without a lot of work. My educated guess would be to do this you'd need to create a very small Linux partition that would be able to mount Windows drives and mount a VHDX and use that as a rootfs.
Do you really need to go into command prompt at boot time, to attach the VHD? I believe you can attach the VHD after creation, within the Disk Management program in the host Windows.
I there any way to enable/disable SSD drives (particularly, M.2 NVME), so that, certain drives are hidden from certain OS boots? We used to be able to do this with SATA drives using different BIOS profiles, but I can't see how to do it with M.2 NVME drives.
@@ClickNextDemos "We used to be able to do this with SATA drives using different BIOS profiles, but I can't see how to do it with M.2 NVME drives" --> I'm asking about the M.2 NVME drives. These are not connected to SATA ports!
I'd have to check this again, but from what I remember, when you attach the disk via Disk Management, is doesn't stay attached when you reboot the pc, hence why it is necessary to do attach from diskpart in the command prompt during the setup process.
Using it, Works Beautifully, but you cannot attach vdisk in windows setup if the bitlocker is enabled, so disable bitlocker before you try to install, How do you record while the pc is turned off are you doing everything in a virtual machine??
I think it may be possible to do on Bitlocker disk if you unlock the drive before mounting the VHDX file. You can use the "Manage-BDE" command to unlock the drive, then mount the VHDX file and install Windows to it. Although, decrypting the disk, installing the additional OS, then re-encrypting afterwards would also work. Regarding the recording, in this video, yes I used a Virtual Machine (Hyper-V). But I also often use an Elgato capture device as well some times if I need to properly record a pc rebooting.
I also haven't tried, but I believe you can shut down the system (unmounting the vhd/vhdx file) and then make a copy of that file. As long as it is called the same name when copying it back it effectively works as a full system backup for corruptions and other things.
I’m following this tutorial word for word, and when I’m installing windows 11, it just fails and takes me back to the installation media again? Any tips?
I dont understand it what are you doing when you restart the pc nothing is happening at this point it starts normaly but there is no install window coming up
You need to ensure you have bootable Windows installation media connected (example a USB drive containing the Windows installation media). Then tell your system to boot from the USB. You may need to press a certain key to invoke the boot menu, or you may need go into your BIOS and change the Boot order to allow boot from USB Disk.
Good video, though I found it a bit odd to boot into the Windows setup and attach the VHD from there to install to it, my preferred method is initializing the disk and creating the partition from inside of Windows itself, then using the DISM tool to deploy the OS image to the VHD, then using BCDBoot to create the boot configuration data (though I'm not sure if you need to install the Assessment and Deployment Kit for BCDBoot)
I need help with dual boot. My case is that I have an HP Z4, which was set up by my work IT people. It is highly secured. I cannot install anything, and I even do not have access to Disk Management. I decided to install a second SSD hard drive with fresh Windows 10. I was able to install it, and it is working. The problem is that I need help getting to the dual boot menu. It boots from the new SSD with the latest Win 10. I could not change the booting drive from the BOOT Menu. It just would not boot from another m.2 original SSD. When on the new Win 10 SSD, I set the original SSD as the default. Now, I can only boot from the original SSD. I tried to change the boot drive to the new SSD, but nothing happened. It just boots from the original SSD. Does anyone know how I can have a dual boot menu to boot from the original SSD or the new one?
Hello. Very very interesting method ! Thx ! Can you answer me these two questions ? 1) Is there a significant perfomance impact, when running windows from a vhd ? 2) Is there any program or method on the planet to HIDE the "Parent OS drives", perceived from each respective Sub-OS ? I mean on a very early, low-level layer. I would even buy a specific mainboard for just that
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 :)
You can install another instance of the same version you already have and it will automatically activate if it was previously activated but if you install a different edition to what you had before, you would need to enter a new product key to activate.
Many thanks - great tutorial, but I have a problem. When I get to the command prompt window (Shift+F10) it's not finding my C: drive - i.e. I have 3 seperate disks in my machine, when I type in C: it's showing my D: I've tried E: F: G: etc and no joy - How can I find my C: drive? Thanks in advance
It may be that your C: drive is appearing as a different drive letter which sometimes happens if you have multiple disks in a system. Try looking at D: to see if it shows the contents from your C: drive. If still no joy then it may be that your C: drive does not have a drive letter assigned at all, so in that case you can assign a drive letter to it. During Windows Setup, press Shift and F10 to get to a command prompt and type Diskpart to go into the Diskpart tool. You can use the following commands to select a disk, select a volume and assign a drive letter. List Disk Select Disk x (where x is the number of the disk you want to select) List volume Select volume x (where x is the volume you want to select) Assign (which will assign the next available drive letter to the volume) It doesn't matter what drive letter gets assigned at this point. You can usually identify which is volume for your "C:\" drive by looking at the size of the volume. That will usually give you an idea of which one to select.
@@ClickNextDemos Perfect, Many Thanks but I've npw ran into another problem. I'm trying to install another instamnce of Windows 11 24H2 and it fails every time. It gets to about 77% and then just thrpwa up am error of Windows 11 failed to install. I'm going to try with Windows 10 and then will upgrade (if it works)mbut that's a job for tomorrow
@@ady199 Windows 11 24H2 has a new installation routine which had a bug in the installer causing the installation to VHDX to fail. During the setup, look for an option called “Use previous version of setup” Choose this and windows 11 will then install correctly.
First you need to create your installation media, generally the easist/best method would be to create USB installation media. You can do this from www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows11 Then insert the USB, restart the PC and boot from the USB. You may need press a certain key to enable the boot menu to show on boot up so you can then select to boot from the USB media instead of your main storage drive.
edit: fixed by simply assigning a letter to the partition When I try this method, using Ventoy as you did, the partition that has the VHDX file doesn't have a letter in disk part, therefore I can't mount the vhdx file since I can't CD to that drive, why is that?
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.
@@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= 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?
If you boot between two different hard drives you can use a tool called Reboot from Neo Smart Technologies. It lets you fast boot into the other drive right from your windows notification area. No longer have to choose to shut down then choose an os to boot into.
Not that I know of. You need to be able to mount the VHDX file during the Linux setup and I don't it's possible to do this with Linux installers. So Windows OS only I'm afriad.
You usually need to press a certain key to invoke the boot menu where you choose what device to boot from. The common keys are Esc, F12, F10, F9, F8, F1, Del. Try pressing one of the keys during the boot up process.
Hi, good question. I don't believe so, although you could install any Linux Distro alongside the main parent/host OS using the traditional linux installation methods which involve repartitioning the disk. So this would be combining the multiple Windows OS's using VHDX files and a "real" Linux partition. So I think the answer to your question is really no, but it's still possible to dual boot linux. It's just not as flexible and simple to change/revert back as the Windows OS on a virtual disk. Hope that makes sense.
You don't even need a "Main host" OS. Load diskpart from the installer and create and format a partition as NTFS on the physical disk. then use the create vdisk to create the first OS install disk on that ntfs partition.
Really? I totally never know that. But makes sense when you think about it. That's cool, I will definetely being doing that next time I rebuild my PC.
I'm curious, did you already know that or did you try it out after watching this video?
@@ClickNextDemosYou’re replying even after a year Damn
@@ClickNextDemos watched just enough of thr video to hear you mention booting from VHDs and then fired up a virtual machine with the win10 install iso and loaded diskpart.
Just tried it out, works great. I may do an updated video on this, I think it's worth knowing. I will give you a shout out on the video, unless you tell me not to.
@@ClickNextDemos you can also setup the image inside vmware (which is free now) then convert the image to vhd/vhdx using starwind v2v converter ^^
i did this to have multiple os's on my laptop (it was quicker to build them all on my desktop where i could use shared folders to the host os to quickly share files etc)
this is an excellent video man. im very impressed. this is the perfect solution for my line of work.
Glad it helped
@@ClickNextDemosokay so after having used it for a few months. This is excellent but I found one very major disadvantage of this which is that you cannot hibernate your device on the virtual windows. Would you know any way to bypass this issue?
@@muhammadahmar389 do you seriously need to hibernate? Isn't putting your computer to sleep enough?
@@julioau no not for me because I need to work on my virtual secondary windows and keep the programs open and running so that I can hibernate it and take it with me otherwise I have to spend 30 minutes just to get the programs back up and running, not just that it eats through my laptops battery to not hibernate it and I can loose all of my work if the battery dies whilst the laptop is put to sleep.
Daaam! This is the best information ever.
Thanks
this man spoke in no english, no spanish or latin, not technical yet still precise, brother spoke in nothing but facts and did it natively
english or spanish
English > Technical. Done.
@@vi23a He sounded to me like he was speaking Australian English.
@@rayzorite im gonna touch youy ☺
@@amogus875remember
Really enjoyed this new tactic for dual booting multiple OS...Please make more videos like this I would love to see this done to a NAS Western Digital external drive.
I'm amazed that you don't need external programs for this.
This is incredible.
One downside of this is that unless the host windows drive is protected the other OS can access the files. Say you downloaded a malware’virus that compromise those files. This should be used with care if intent is to protect your host OS. If direct hardware access isn’t needed then any Hypervisor to run a VM would be better.
Good point. I wonder if you could disable host OS from the Disk Management Utility so it's not accessible when booted into the other OS, I'll try it and let you know.
@@ClickNextDemos Can you dual boot to an external HD/SSD and not have access to the host OS disk?
you can unmount the partitions / drives that you do not want in diskmgr. but a clever attacker could easily re-mount them if he knew that there were other partitions that are hidden...
What I did was to enable bitlocker on the host PC disk, files can't be accessed from the VHD windows now. Because I have the VHD on a slave disk, I removed the letter from it, working still and not visible from the host
@@meddle68what is VHD?
Marvelous🙂 things to try ==> install vhdx files on a secondary disc, install a Linux distro on a suitably formatted vhdx file 🙂🧐🙂
Did you try it out? :)
Superb video. I run 3 OS's (11, 10 and a release preview of 11_24H2) on one HDD and have sucessfully re-edited the "descriptions" on the boot menu as per your CMD commands. Thanks, and thumbs up.
Awesome. Glad you could make use of this method, it's pretty cool.
why you need 3 os but all is windows?
@@shiftto It was just a demo how it can be done, but here are a few examples of why you might want to run multiple versions of a Windows OS.
A separate OS for work or business
A separate OS for personal stuff
A separate OS for gaming (where OS is optimised for gaming)
A separate OS for running release previews of upcoming versions of Windows
A separate OS for experimenting with software
@@ClickNextDemos This is so sick.
I really wanted yo try Ameliorated Windows for gaming but It wrecks stuff I need for university(Crappy Autodesk BS).
This is awesome!
Great video! This method is simpler than resizing the hard drive and allows multiple systems to run. Thanks!
Just wow! Thank you bro I have a few customers where my peoduct does not work on there windows version I always told them to use dual boot but they just don’t get it to work with this it will be 100% easier video is so easy and just such a smart and nice way todo it Thank you!
Awesome, glad it can help.
6:05 it's giving me a error message saying, "The arguments specified for this command are not valid." Please help
Check you are entering the command correctly and also ensure you are using the correct drive letter, path and filename for your virtual disk file.
@@ClickNextDemos i did, I triple checked
I'm stuck in the windows setup I keep getting error says "we couldn't create a new partition or locate an existing one"
Remeber to use previous version of setup (option available on screen when you choose whether to repair your pc or install windows 11) when installing Win11 on vhdx otherwise it might give you "Windows 11 installation has failed".
Great comment. There is a bug with the Windows 11 - 24H2 installer which causes the install of Windows 11 to fail when installing to a VHD or VHDX file. But choosing the option to "Use previous verison of setup" works fine so you will need to ensure you choose this option when installing 24H2, otherwise the install will fail at the end
@ClickNextDemos
I want yo install it debloated using autonatted.xml
What do to in such case because it doesn't ask for that option if using this xml
For me, it doesn’t work anymore starting from the point with CMD. Nothing works after that. I can still access C:, but when I try cd vhdx, it says something like its not existing . I’ve redone everything several times and have no idea what else to do. When I Go in Windows and try the command its finding it
Why did i not find this a year ago - lol - Truly amazing video - thank you very much for sharing.
Glad you enjoyed it!
Wow totally didn't expect to learn something new. Great info, nicely told. Thank you!!
2:39 how did you show only the year in the clock?
Go into Control Panel, Region Settings, additional Settings, Date tab. Change "Short date" to YYY. Go back to Time tab and change "Short time" to SS.
As far as I know, Windows only.
does this work if the virtual disk is on a different drive like the d drive?
Yes, as long as the host can see the physical disk, it can be on any disk. I would only recommend using fixed disks though, and not USB external drives.
Since windows 10 and 11 if you put 2 windows ssd in same pc last installed windows makes corrupted lastest installed first one , for example i have windows 11 ssd for main , then insert external windows 11 or 10 ssd to pc , in this case main ssd is bootmgr files corrupted , why and how? , I want to use same ssd in all pcs like a brain
A compact solution and fully packed tutorial for windows 10 lovers but wanna give the 11 a try , too.
Thanks
my system doesn't even support 11, it was made a month before 7 came out.
06NinjaKid06 Don't worry, 11 is bad and has windows recall
@@n646n ik
So cool. I have seen this for the first time. Excellent job mate.
Thanks a lot!
How is this different than making a VM on VMWare workstation? I want the other OS to not have access to the parent OS
It’s very different. Installing in VMware means the OS is running in virtualisation. Installing to a VHDX means the OS is running on the physical hardware (Bare metal). I haven’t found a reliable method to restrict access to the other OS unfortunately.
What can one do when a windows update create a new partition and destroy the boot in Linux?
10:18 what is the third party utilities to rename the windows?
EasyBCD - neosmart.net/EasyBCD/
Choose the non-comercial Free version. Click on Register, then click on Download.
You don't need to enter a name and email address.
@ClickNextDemos thanks
Can I have on the one atlasOS and on the other „parantos“ normal my win11 with out any problems?
Yes you can. In fact that is a great example of why someone may want to dual boot this way.
@ ah okay thank you so much
entering the command "c:" it responds with access denied I made sure all users and groups had permission over the drive but nothing changes any ideas?
It may be that your main hard drive is encrypted with bitlocker. If so you either need to use the manage-bde command to mount the encrypted volume which would then let you access the encrypted drive, or turn off bitlocker completely
Nice and clear - worked a treat for me updating from 10 to 11 !
Is there a way to prevent the guest OS from having access to the host OS? Or other guests?
Hi hi. I followed your steps the exact way you had and im on 5:54 , but it keeps on telling me "the system cannot find the path specified". Why is that?
You need to ensure you are entering the correct path and filename.
For example: If the virtual disk file is called Windows11.vhdx and located in C:\VHDX then the command would look like this -:
select vdisk file=C:\VHDX\Windows11.vhdx
If you are still getting the error, can you see the folder and virtual disk file if you type DIR at the command prompt.
Perhaps your drive is appearing as a different driver letter other that C:, it may be D: for example
If you are having trouble identifying the driver letter where your virtual disk is located, try using the following command.
diskpart
list volume
From here, you should be able to work out the drive letter of the disk that the vhdx is stored on.
@ClickNextDemos hey! I discovered that the entire problem was a corrupt operating system. I've re-installed windows 10 and now everything works! Thank you for your help!
This is pretty helpful, i was always using the partiton method which can be a pain to get rid of, Keep upthe good work!
Same! OMG where has this been all my life 😂
Very cool! Thanks a bunch. Are you able to do major/feature updates like 24H2 with the VHDX installs? When I tried native boot like this several years ago, I would get error messages that updates could not be install on VHD(X?) files.
I have an old PC with Windows 8...and just purchased a new Windows 11 machine. If I move the old hard drive to the new computer, how can I set this up? I dont need to install windows as I am moving over the entire hard drive.
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.
This is incredible. Thanks a lot for sharing this!
I am new to this stuff how do I get it to run the windows boot for the new drive on restart mine just restarts into the current OS and don't get an option to install windows 10 to the new drive before I boot
Awesome video. I’ve done a win 10 > 11 upgrade and it works but BSOD’s under certain circumstances. So I’ll restore w10 and do a separate virtual drive like you. One concern if henceforth I only use the win11 install because w10 is soon dying will there be a security concern since w10 was the parent installation host ??
I got problem - windows won't start installing - giving me message We couldn't create a new partition or locate existing one - can't pass this - I was even trying to create new partition and format but it stuck on this
Ok - I sorted this problem - I disconnect other discs and this work like a charm !
what does that mean @@lukuxider2000
@@lukuxider2000what other disks... I have the same problem
@@beamyfrfr try to disconnect other disks connected to motherboard - this work for me
How do you expand the vhdx size after?
I showed how to do that in the video, check it out here.
ruclips.net/video/7JBFJuA5QsM/видео.html
@@ClickNextDemos silly me :D
so if i install something that isnt safe will it effect my main os
how do i access my user folder in the host os drive while booted in the guest os?
You should still see the host OS when booted into a guest OS. Just browse to the other disk and navigate to the folder you want to access. You may be prompted to grant yourself access to the files.
Wouldnt the harddrive be slower with a vhd?
Technically yes, but it's not normally noticeable.
If you really require the best possible performance from the disk (for gaming or video editing for example), then you could install a second disk with a traditional Windows partition and install your games or data on that physical disk.
it is giving me a error saying 'A virtual disk support provider for the specified file was not found'
Ensure you are using the correct file path for your VHDX file and also ensure that a drive letter is assigned to the physical disk (it isn't always).
In Diskpart...
Type "list volume" and press ENTER to see a list of volumes.
You should see the volume which contains your VHDX. You can identify this by the file size as it will most likely be the biggest size. See which drive letter has been assigned (it's not always C:)
If the volume does not have a drive letter assigned, you can do the following-:
Type "Select volume x" and press ENTER. Where x = the number of the volume.
Type "Assign" and press ENTER. This will then assign a drive letter.
Then mount the VHDX by doing the following (Change C: to whatever drive letter yours is)
select vdisk file=C:\Folder\Filename.VHDX
attach vdisk
When I load into windows 10 from windows 11, my windows 10 does not have wifi. Any idea how I can fix this? My lan cable doesn’t work so I can’t use lan
I suspect you need to install a driver for the Wi-Fi adapter. Check Device Manager in your Windows 11 system to see what your Wi-Fi adapter is called. Then download the driver (use google to search for the download). Save the driver software somewhere, then boot into Windows 10 and install the driver.
Can you explain how to move the child os to a new pc?
Look out for a follow up video coming soon that will include that very thing.
I did everything you said until I tried to attach the vhdx folder in cmd. When I go to c: and type cd vhdx the error I get is the system cannot find the path specified. Can someone help me to sort this out please
It may be that the disk containg your VHD file is coming up on a different drive letter other than C: or it doesn't have a drive letter assigned at all.
At the command prompt.....
Type "Diskpart" and press ENTER
Type "List Volume" and press ENTER
This will list the volumes including your disk that contains the VHD file.
See what letter it has assigned to it, it may be a different letter.
You can discover which volume is the disk by looking at the size, it will probably be the one with the biggest size.
If no letter is assigned at all, then do the following -:
Type "select volume x" and press ENTER. (where x is the volume number of your disk containing the VHD file). For example: select volume 0
Type "assign" and press ENTER.
A drive letter will then be assigned to your disk/volume.
Type "List volume" and pres ENTER to list the volumes again.
This time, you should see a driver letter attached, e.g C:\ D:\ or E:\
Small question, does linux work instead of windows? would be great to know (my parent PC is windows 11. and i would want to boot into Linux/ubuntu)
Not that I know of. You need to be able to mount the VHDX file during the Linux setup and I don't it's possible to do this with Linux installers. So Windows OS only I'm afriad.
@@ClickNextDemos thanks for letting me know! great video!
Wow, never thought about this way of dual booting before. Thank you very much!
Could you also explain how to decrease the size of the virtual disk? You said it is harder, but what if i need to?
And can virtual disks be used for linux too and how?
Not that I know of. You need to be able to mount the VHDX file during the Linux setup and I don't it's possible to do this with Linux installers. So Windows OS only I'm afriad.
Can the child/guest OS be Ubuntu? with bitlocker on in windows?
this is very good idea. however, If i would try to create a vhd disk on an external "nvme enclosure disk", usb key or an SD card... i cant later on point this wirtyal disk for installation. I also tried to first install and later copy this vhd disk to external drive but then I have no idea how to point bootloader to read from this external drive. is there a way to do that?
Hello, if the Host OS is encrypted using bitlocker, will the guest OS be automatically bitlocked since it's on the same drive? I want to make each OS to be isolated through different bitlocker keys, is that possible on the same real drive?
Yes, if your host drive is encrypted with bitlocker then the vhd files would be encrypted. You would need to mount the bitlocker drive during the setup process. Ive never tested it so not sure how well that would work. In your scenario it may be better to install a second drive and put your vhds on that then enable bitlocker on the individual vhds. Again I’ve never tried but would be interested to see if it would work.
I followed and did the same as you, but i have win11 and wish to download win10, after booting into wins 10 install and opening cmd, i type c: then cd vhdx but i get “the system cannot find the path specified”.
I even went back to main drive and confirmed the path specified, tried renaming it and still nothing. Can anyone please help
I have a AOMEI Backupper backup of my current windows and i want to restore that image to a virtual drive how can i do this?
Follow the same process but boot up with the aomei boot media instead of windows boot media. There is an option to open a command prompt where you can then mount your vhdx file. Then restore your image from the aomei restore wizard.
@@ClickNextDemos I have save my current os backup but that backup contain three partition 1st one is EFI System partition 100MB 2nd is Recovery partition 641mb and the last main os drive is 300 gb now i have tried to install the os only and its not working it require other two partitions to boot
Would it be possible to copy image file (VHD) and then edit boot file to clone installed windows?
Yes, that's possible. New video coming soon.
This was a very well produced video. However, you never mentioned about the recovery partition that was created after installing Windows 11 as a secondary OS. I had to figure out how to delete that first before I could increase the capacity of the virtual disk. It took me forever to figure out how to do that. Once I did everything was fine.
Good point, that would have been useful to include in the video. That was an oversight on my part. Glad you worked it out though.
Can you do this with linux distros as well?
This has made the dual boot vhdx system extremely slow. Do you have any possible solutions for this
@ClickNextDemos Thanks for the video! Is it possible to clone my current operating system and mount it as a dual boot?
I would say yes but it's not easy to explain in a RUclips comment. Perhaps will do that in a future video if there is demand for it.
Can I use this method to ad a virtual drive of the Haiku OS to the boot menu?
5:05 The part you pasted the windows 11 was unclear could you show how to do it ?
Did you ever figure that out
Never knew you could do this.. Thanks for the tutorial
can you mover all your data from one OS system to another and then delete the first OS system?
This did not work for me. It refused to allow the installation, and I can't find anything online that would indicate why. The logs aren't much help either.
Hello, is there any way to hide the Main driver from the windows installed on the other driver? thanks!
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.
Wow! Just found this, pretty much by accicent! I'm amazed, how come I've never come across this before! Very well explained, thanks! 😀
I run into some error when locating the vhdx file, saying I should turn off bitlocker. If I decide to turn it on again would i still be able to boot from the vhdx drive?
You don’t need to turn off bitlocker but you will need to mount the encrypted drive after you boot from the USB media and open the command prompt.
You need to use a command called manage-bde to mount the encrypted drive. You will need your bitlocker recovery key for this.
Google manage-bde for how to use it
Is it possible to block access to other disk while using VHDX OS? I don't want the chance of affecting those main files while using the virtual one.
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.
Sir i am using win 8.1 bootable pendrive but while selecting "cd vhdx" its showing me error that the system cannot find the path specified....
Btw m using windows 10 and trying to install win 8.1
Great video! Thanks! Can you also install in the virtual disk a linux distribution? Or does this only work for windows distributions?
not sure, but he did mention that windows os with no uefi support won't work. so, maybe something similar in case of a linux distro? i can't tell, need to test. for now i'm going with virtualbox.
I've just had a go installing Mint with WIn11 as the Host OS. I hit a roadblock attaching the vhdx disk during install. Install happens in a linux live environment instead of Windows live environment so the commands shown in this video didn't work. Attempt aborted, more research needed...
I wonder if you had a way to just expand the Linux ISO onto the VMDK under Windows and then reboot. Not sure if that would work. Probably have to do some bcdedit work 🤔
@@DoctorWossname thanks a lot for informing us this.
It may be possible, but not without a lot of work.
My educated guess would be to do this you'd need to create a very small Linux partition that would be able to mount Windows drives and mount a VHDX and use that as a rootfs.
Do you really need to go into command prompt at boot time, to attach the VHD? I believe you can attach the VHD after creation, within the Disk Management program in the host Windows.
But it won't be attached after you reboot.
How do i eject the host disk? For viruses testing
I there any way to enable/disable SSD drives (particularly, M.2 NVME), so that, certain drives are hidden from certain OS boots? We used to be able to do this with SATA drives using different BIOS profiles, but I can't see how to do it with M.2 NVME drives.
I think some BIOS allow you to enable or disable SATA ports.
@@ClickNextDemos "We used to be able to do this with SATA drives using different BIOS profiles, but I can't see how to do it with M.2 NVME drives" --> I'm asking about the M.2 NVME drives. These are not connected to SATA ports!
In the disk management action menu
There's the option to "attach vhd"
Can we use this instead of using the command prompt?
I'd have to check this again, but from what I remember, when you attach the disk via Disk Management, is doesn't stay attached when you reboot the pc, hence why it is necessary to do attach from diskpart in the command prompt during the setup process.
What if I want to install Linux this way
How do I mount vhdx in Ubuntu installer 🙂
Great question, if you ever find out how to do that, let me know as it's the most requested feature on this video.
This is brilliant! Thank you for this walkthrough and tutorial. Subscribed!
Welcome aboard!
if i have some problem for mawere in any system can i delete and the primary dont get any problems ?
If the malware doesn't spread to the real/host drives you should be fine
If I were to have two windows 10 installs, do I need two different activation keys for each install?
Nope, as long as the first one is activated with a valid product key, the second OS will automatically activate.
Using it, Works Beautifully, but you cannot attach vdisk in windows setup if the bitlocker is enabled, so disable bitlocker before you try to install, How do you record while the pc is turned off are you doing everything in a virtual machine??
I think it may be possible to do on Bitlocker disk if you unlock the drive before mounting the VHDX file. You can use the "Manage-BDE" command to unlock the drive, then mount the VHDX file and install Windows to it.
Although, decrypting the disk, installing the additional OS, then re-encrypting afterwards would also work.
Regarding the recording, in this video, yes I used a Virtual Machine (Hyper-V). But I also often use an Elgato capture device as well some times if I need to properly record a pc rebooting.
is it possible to additionally save the vhxd file in another folder as a backup to replace the active version with the backup if it gets corrupted?
I've never tested that but can't see why it wouldn't work. I may try it and let you know.
I also haven't tried, but I believe you can shut down the system (unmounting the vhd/vhdx file) and then make a copy of that file. As long as it is called the same name when copying it back it effectively works as a full system backup for corruptions and other things.
I’m following this tutorial word for word, and when I’m installing windows 11, it just fails and takes me back to the installation media again? Any tips?
Fixed my own problem, picked the wrong install menu
I dont understand it what are you doing when you restart the pc nothing is happening at this point it starts normaly but there is no install window coming up
You need to ensure you have bootable Windows installation media connected (example a USB drive containing the Windows installation media). Then tell your system to boot from the USB. You may need to press a certain key to invoke the boot menu, or you may need go into your BIOS and change the Boot order to allow boot from USB Disk.
can i use this to dualboot windows and linux without formatting any of my drives?
Good video, though I found it a bit odd to boot into the Windows setup and attach the VHD from there to install to it, my preferred method is initializing the disk and creating the partition from inside of Windows itself, then using the DISM tool to deploy the OS image to the VHD, then using BCDBoot to create the boot configuration data (though I'm not sure if you need to install the Assessment and Deployment Kit for BCDBoot)
Thanks - I'll take a look a that approach.
Not just enjoyed it, but love your work....keep it up mate!!
I need help with dual boot. My case is that I have an HP Z4, which was set up by my work IT people. It is highly secured. I cannot install anything, and I even do not have access to Disk Management.
I decided to install a second SSD hard drive with fresh Windows 10. I was able to install it, and it is working. The problem is that I need help getting to the dual boot menu. It boots from the new SSD with the latest Win 10. I could not change the booting drive from the BOOT Menu. It just would not boot from another m.2 original SSD. When on the new Win 10 SSD, I set the original SSD as the default. Now, I can only boot from the original SSD. I tried to change the boot drive to the new SSD, but nothing happened. It just boots from the original SSD.
Does anyone know how I can have a dual boot menu to boot from the original SSD or the new one?
Hello. Very very interesting method ! Thx !
Can you answer me these two questions ?
1) Is there a significant perfomance impact, when running windows from a vhd ?
2) Is there any program or method on the planet to HIDE the "Parent OS drives", perceived from each respective Sub-OS ? I mean on a very early, low-level layer.
I would even buy a specific mainboard for just that
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 :)
what about licence, if I have oem windows home can I install another on same? will it activate?
You can install another instance of the same version you already have and it will automatically activate if it was previously activated but if you install a different edition to what you had before, you would need to enter a new product key to activate.
Concise and to the point 👏👏 thank you❤️
when i insert my usb with the windows iso, and i restart, windows just boots back into my normal os? not the setup
Have you selected the first boot to be the USB in the BIOS?
Many thanks - great tutorial, but I have a problem. When I get to the command prompt window (Shift+F10) it's not finding my C: drive - i.e. I have 3 seperate disks in my machine, when I type in C: it's showing my D: I've tried E: F: G: etc and no joy - How can I find my C: drive? Thanks in advance
It may be that your C: drive is appearing as a different drive letter which sometimes happens if you have multiple disks in a system. Try looking at D: to see if it shows the contents from your C: drive.
If still no joy then it may be that your C: drive does not have a drive letter assigned at all, so in that case you can assign a drive letter to it.
During Windows Setup, press Shift and F10 to get to a command prompt and type Diskpart to go into the Diskpart tool.
You can use the following commands to select a disk, select a volume and assign a drive letter.
List Disk
Select Disk x (where x is the number of the disk you want to select)
List volume
Select volume x (where x is the volume you want to select)
Assign (which will assign the next available drive letter to the volume)
It doesn't matter what drive letter gets assigned at this point.
You can usually identify which is volume for your "C:\" drive by looking at the size of the volume. That will usually give you an idea of which one to select.
@@ClickNextDemos Perfect, Many Thanks but I've npw ran into another problem. I'm trying to install another instamnce of Windows 11 24H2 and it fails every time. It gets to about 77% and then just thrpwa up am error of Windows 11 failed to install. I'm going to try with Windows 10 and then will upgrade (if it works)mbut that's a job for tomorrow
@@ady199 Windows 11 24H2 has a new installation routine which had a bug in the installer causing the installation to VHDX to fail.
During the setup, look for an option called “Use previous version of setup”
Choose this and windows 11 will then install correctly.
@@sfernleyFinally got it to work - Thanks for all your help with this.
how do you insert your installation media
First you need to create your installation media, generally the easist/best method would be to create USB installation media. You can do this from www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows11
Then insert the USB, restart the PC and boot from the USB. You may need press a certain key to enable the boot menu to show on boot up so you can then select to boot from the USB media instead of your main storage drive.
Very awesome video. Saving this for future reference.
edit: fixed by simply assigning a letter to the partition
When I try this method, using Ventoy as you did, the partition that has the VHDX file doesn't have a letter in disk part, therefore I can't mount the vhdx file since I can't CD to that drive, why is that?
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=
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?
If you boot between two different hard drives you can use a tool called Reboot from Neo Smart Technologies. It lets you fast boot into the other drive right from your windows notification area. No longer have to choose to shut down then choose an os to boot into.
That sounds cool, I'll take a look. Thanks.
@@ClickNextDemos Sorry, typo above. The tool is called iReboot.
Is this possible to do with linux as well? So dual booting windows 11 and debian?
can i use it with existing vhd drive from my vm?
Is there a way to do with linux like make the vhdx file in windows then going into linux and doing it?
Not that I know of. You need to be able to mount the VHDX file during the Linux setup and I don't it's possible to do this with Linux installers. So Windows OS only I'm afriad.
I created a bootable usb and restarted my pc and it didn't go to the install screen.
You usually need to press a certain key to invoke the boot menu where you choose what device to boot from. The common keys are Esc, F12, F10, F9, F8, F1, Del.
Try pressing one of the keys during the boot up process.
This does add a higher cpu load when doing any disc access but it is very handy
Haven't noticed this but also never measured it before.
Can Ubuntu be installed in this fashion?
Hi, good question. I don't believe so, although you could install any Linux Distro alongside the main parent/host OS using the traditional linux installation methods which involve repartitioning the disk. So this would be combining the multiple Windows OS's using VHDX files and a "real" Linux partition. So I think the answer to your question is really no, but it's still possible to dual boot linux. It's just not as flexible and simple to change/revert back as the Windows OS on a virtual disk.
Hope that makes sense.
Is it possible for my parent PC to get hacked by the child PC if i install viruses only?