Can I stop Win10 hijacking my dual boot options?

FuturDreamz · 25 Sep 2016

SonicHawk said:

I don't like to have all my eggs in one OS basket. And anyway, my dual boot enables access to a dependable frozen-in-time 2013 install of Win7 that can run things that are broken in Win10. Of course, that Win7 OS is blocked from the Internet, to prevent any updates throwing a spanner in the works. Could I trust a virtual one to act the same way? I think not!

Every VM engine worth it's salt gives you full control over how you want to emulate the NIC - disabling it completely is easy as pie - and won't be automagically reennabled. You can manually bork Win7's IPv4/6 configuration settings if you were concerned, so even if it does have interent access it won't be able to get an ip address or connect to anything. Virtual machines have hardware acceleration so you are unlikely to run into a case where a specific application will not run properly in a VM. Really it's not that hard to try out - hell, just install VirtualBox for free and set up a VM with no internet access and point it to your existing Windows 7 partition.

I really think dual-booting is completely unnecessary in this day and age, and is actually quite risky with frequently patched OSs like Windows.

DavidE · 25 Sep 2016

I use both multi-booting and VM's.
For me, each have pros and cons.

I prefer a bare-metal install rather than using a VM using emulators for an OS i "always use".
For me it's more than just the NIC that works differently in a VM.

imho, each person should decide for them-self what is better, dual-boot or VM.

bro67 · 25 Sep 2016

Also using the term "HiJack" leads us to first believe that you have a malware issue. Wanting one thing and how it works in the real world are two different things. Also blocking Windows 7 from being able to update itself is opening you to huge security problems. As for those so called issues that 10 has, those are quickly being fixed with those companies that sell and write that software are working with Microsoft on finding out what is the real cause of the problem'

No there is no such thing as a Red Screen of Life. Red Screen of Death is just a term and it is a major hardware issue when you get that error screen.

I agree with the others to choose which OS you want to run full time and run the other in a VM. If anything happens, you can shut down the VM and run it as if nothing ever happened before the problem. Just need a fast enough GPU and RAM to allow you to use the VM as if it is running a a computer, not in a Virtual environment. Thousands of software testers use VM's all of the time with no issues.

Those that have given you suggestions on a better Boot Screen to choose which OS to run, is letting you know that there is a better way to handle using two OS's. The other is to use a Swap bay that you can pull the drive and put in the other if you want to alternate which OS you want to use, without the other effecting the other.

DeaconFrost · 26 Sep 2016

FuturDreamz said:

I really think dual-booting is completely unnecessary in this day and age, and is actually quite risky with frequently patched OSs like Windows.

Couldn't agree more.

DavidE said:

For me it's more than just the NIC that works differently in a VM.

That's the beauty of it. It doesn't work differently. It also doesn't require booting out of one OS to use the other.