Hi there, I'm Scott, a computer and Windows enthusiast.
This channel will be full of demos on how to do stuff with computers, home labs and tinkering with the latest version of Windows or other software apps and services that I like or think are cool.
Feel free to get in touch with any questions about any of the demos or request a demo for me to cover.
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.
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.
Check out the video from 8:33 using this link. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-jkfZoH7QHhs.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.
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=<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?
Very nice video I liked the the in place upgrade I would assume it work exactly as you do the in place upgrade from win 10 to win 11 from the set-up usb I don't have secure boot enabled, would this effect the installation of win 11
Hello! I wasn't able to install Windows 10 because of my disk format being in mbr, I tried converting the virtual disk into gpt and was prompted this error message: We couldn't install windows in the location you chose. 0x80300024. Is there anyway for me to fix it without converting my actual existing c drive into gpt?
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.
How does this work with BitLocker? Can the "child" os be installed on an encrypted drive? Will it have access to parent drive? Seems like this method doesn't really isolate installations from each other. Otherwise, very cool, didnt know you could use virtual drives in win installer.
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. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-jkfZoH7QHhs.html
i have a 500gb ssd and i put a windows 10 installation on it, i need to have gparted and the windows installer both seperate to boot into but even following this tutorial, i dont get the option to boot into these, any ideas?
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
Hey buddy I like this idea.but if your old pc don’t have TMP.20 or secure boot that would leave your pc vulnerable to hackers,malicious software is that right?
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?
If only it did what it said and actually displayed detailed messages. They're extremely general at best and just not as useful as it could be if it would actually display what's going on.
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.
Thank you very much for an excellent guide to install / upgrade to Windows 11. I learned more during the 12 minutes than I had from watching lots of other guides. I didn't realise Rufus had so many new features. You explain things so clearly, thank you for that.
Do you know how I can change a boot partition for Windows 11 to also boot Windows 10 from a different drive? Also, can I copy an existing boot partition from one drive to another and still be able to boot my OS after deleting the original?
I just used it and 2 minutes has gone by and it said 17gb transferred already. I was like, "that's not right that can't be true" It is. I'm never using windows explorer to copy large amounts of files ever again.
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!
This is amazing. Robocopy ran over 24 hours and only copied 8 gig of my 320gig files. Fast copy did all my files in less than 2 hours. Im copying from laptop with ssd to my old 16tb lenovo px4-300d nas. Truly awesome!!!!!!
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.
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 :)
