Dual OS Installation Help Required

bartjunited · 08 Sep 2018

Hopefully this is the right section to post this.

I use my 2 laptops for djing and I want to be able to set up 2 instances of Windows 10 on one of the laptops so I can set it up with different software versions for testing.

Therefore I'd like to create

2 partitions (i think this is what i need)

Install windows 10 on both

partition 1 - software x with config x
partition 2 - software y with config y

that way i can test the 2 set ups independent of each other and when I am satisfied with the one I want I can blow the other one away and add it back to one of the partitions

FYI my data/music is all on a seperate partition

TIA Bart

Berton · 08 Sep 2018

It would be possible but you'd have to reboot each time for the testing, be difficult to immediately see the differences between the 2 versions of the program. I'd think a second Notebook would be better to see what is happening real-time.

bartjunited · 08 Sep 2018

Berton said:

It would be possible but you'd have to reboot each time for the testing, be difficult to immediately see the differences between the 2 versions of the program. I'd think a second Notebook would be better to see what is happening real-time.

rebooting is fine as i dont intend to try and use them together

needs to be on the same hardware to see how the software etc reacts

so I config 1 would be the original or base software and i want to see if this works properly

then config 2 is the new software and i want to test how this works

when i make changes to the software in config 2 it will affect how config 1 behaves if they are on the same partition and os

and its literally for a very short period of time that i need to do this

the other alternative is to build config 1 take an image, then build config 2 and if that doesnt work revert back to image for config 1

NavyLCDR · 08 Sep 2018

You could install Windows to a VHDX virtual hard disk. NOTE this is NOT a virtual machine! Then once you were done testing, all you would have to do is delete the VHDX file. It might seem a bit complicated to do it that way if you have never done it before, but once you get the procedure down it's pretty easy. The basic procedure is to create the VHDX virtual hard disk in your running Windows 10. Reboot the computer from a Windows 10 installation drive and at the first screen press shift-F10 to get a command prompt. Enter a few diskpart commands to mount the VHDX file as a virtual hard drive, then proceed through the installation normally, selecting the virtual hard disk to install to. It should set up dual booting automatically.

Or the easier way would be to shrink your existing partitions to make room for an additional partition and just install Windows 10 to that. It will set up dual booting automatically. I recommend MiniTool Partition Wizard Free to shrink your partitions and create the extra partition:
Best Free Partition Manager for Windows | MiniTool Partition Free
Then when you are done testing you can delete the test partition and resize your existing partitions back to fill the empty space.

lx07 · 08 Sep 2018

There is a tutorial here - it works the same with 2 instances of Windows 10.

Dual Boot Windows 10 with Windows 7 or Windows 8 | Windows 10 Tutorials

bartjunited · 08 Sep 2018

Thank you.
The 2nd option of using a 2nd partition seems a bit easier for me 😜😜😜

Plus I guess if I feel the need to keep it for any reason I can

What do you recommend to be a decent size if I want to install just the os plus 2 apps

NavyLCDR · 08 Sep 2018

bartjunited said:

Thank you.
The 2nd option of using a 2nd partition seems a bit easier for me 😜😜😜

Plus I guess if I feel the need to keep it for any reason I can

What do you recommend to be a decent size if I want to install just the os plus 2 apps

With Windows update the way it is, I would recommend 40GB as a minimum.

bartjunited · 08 Sep 2018

Even if I am likely to only keep it for a short time?

NavyLCDR · 08 Sep 2018

bartjunited said:

Even if I am likely to only keep it for a short time?

At 32GB you would start to see issues with Windows Updates, more than likely on patch Tuesdays.

topgundcp · 09 Sep 2018

IMO, 30GB is enough for what you are doing. As a test, I installed Windows-2 in 2nd partition and it only took 16.4GB so you'd have 13.5GB free to play with. This also included the latest cumulative updates [Version 10.0.17134.254] and as you can see, my main working Windows only took ~20GB.

Dual OS Installation Help Required-win10.jpg

There is a tutorial here - it works the same with 2 instances of Windows 10.

Dual Boot Windows 10 with Windows 7 or Windows 8 | Windows 10 Tutorials

It is not necessary to have a long tutorial to install Windows. You just need 2 commands:
Assuming you copy install.wim/install.esd from the installation disk to desktop and the drive letter for the 2nd Windows 10 is I: then open the command prompt, navigate to Desktop and type, use install.esd if it's not install.wim:
dism /Apply-Image /ImageFile:install.wim /index:1 /ApplyDir:I:\
bcdboot I:\Windows

NOTE: Use the appropriate Index in the command above for the Windows edition that you are installing by running the command:
dism /Get-WimInfo /WimFile:install.wim