Hello, I am trying to build a Windows 10 setup that I can boot onto my USB flash drive stick and then boot on my computer startup screen so I can switch from Linux Mint 18.3 Sylvia to Windows 10. Please help me. Thanks.
I don't dual-boot Windows and Linux, have Linux Mint 19.1 on separate computers from Windows. But I think I'd remove the USB part of the equation and have Windows and Linux installed on separate partitions or separate drives in the compute and set up the dual-boot to make the choice. The pages on this Search should provide sufficient information:
dual boot linux and windows 10 at DuckDuckGo
You cannot normally install Windows 10 on a USB Flash Drive or USB hard disk. One exception is USB-to-Go but to do that you normally need to do within Windows 10 Enterprise. There are utilities (gimagex) to extract Windows 10 Home or Pro installation from the setup.wim file found on sources folder of Windows DVD or USB . You can extract the Windows 10 Setup in a USB Flash drive (at least 32GB) or USB hard disk formatted as NTFS. You then make the partition active (bootable) and add the Windows boot loader. I don't give exact details because I am not sure if this method is legit. You then boot with this USB and it is in the first restart stage of a Windows-to-go installation. You simply proceed with all the steps including creating the user and though the first login. Then you install drivers, if necessary and any applications you want. You can then just plug this USB to another computer, install any drivers necessary and use it there as well. I used that method to create a custom "WinPE" USB Flash drive with diagnostic tools so I can fix any PC. One major disadvantage, you cannot update it to the next Windows 10 build, so make sure you use the latest build you can find.
Best Free Windows To Go Creator Wizard Helps Create Portable Windows 10/8/7!
Search the forums for tutorials on how to do it all. You need to do a bit of reading up on it all first, get your head around all the variables.
Other options are dual boot W10/Linux Mint on your main boot drive with different partitions maybe. Relatively simple to do.
Multi boot with different SATA drives. Again relatively easy.
W10 in a Virtual Machine on top of Linux host.
Linux Mint in a VM on top of W10 host.
All have pluses and minuses, again you'd need to read around the subject a fair bit to get it clear in your head.
Diving in blind is the worst option to take, unless you like living dangerously or lots of surprises...
Hi folks
@Genesis123
What I have is a 500 GB external SSD drive which I attach to computer via SATA-->USB3 adapter.
what to do :
Use Hasleo WintoUSB or similar to clone existing windows installation to the USB drive first
If using Hasleo Wintousb you need to create a EFI partition (use diskpart : create partition efi size=100 then format quick fs=fat32 then create a primary partition big enough for your windows installation -- leave enough space for the linux partition which we'll use later. For the windows main partition use ntfs, for the efi one use fat32.
After you've cloned your Windows to the USB -- BEFORE attempting to boot it you'll need to modify 2 files in the windows/system32/drivers directory :
1) Rename uaspstore.sys to uaspstor.sys.old
2) Copy USBSTOR.SYS (the one in caps) to uaspstor.sys so you've actually got 2 lots of USBSTOR.SYS one as uaspstor.sys
to carry out the above changes you might need to boot a linux live distro as doing it from within windows gives all sorts of admin privileges problems. If you don't do the file renames then boot will fail GSOD with various odd messages usually of the sort driver load error or similar.
3) Now the external device should boot up just fine and if running on the original machine - no activation problems either.
4) adjust the partition so you've got enough space for your linux distro.
5) install your Linux OS on this partition in the usual way
6) now at boot (on the external device) you should see a choice of which OS to boot.
Another way is to install the Linux OS as a VM on the windows system (the one on the USB connected SSD) -- actually a lot easier.
Note using an SSD rather than a USB stick gives really good performance - 256 GB SSD's now available for around 27 EUR so not much difference between a 256 GB SSD and a USB 64 GB drive !!!!
External Windows like this runs faster on an old laptop than the internal windows which is on an old laptop HDD !!!!! Also saves re-installing everything again too.
Cheers
jimbo
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