@@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?
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 :)
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 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.
Very good tutorial, worked well apart from 2 small things, when i boot i get a check for disk integrity for \?\, skipping the check does not apear to impact the anything in my main boot(win 7), but it lags to a unusable degree if i do the check(like, 1 fps) but goes back to normal if i restart and ignore it, and my windows 10 dual boot is working fine, has the same check but when its finished nothing apears to change, if i restart onto it later it asks to do it again so at the time i just keep skipping it, the main problem i have is that when on win10 it uses 100% of the disk and takes about 6-7 min on desktop to be responsive while still using a lot(it does not happen in my main system), may it be because im using win 7 as the host, or am i missing some setting in bios?
Thanks for the comment. Sorry, I don't know what is going on in your case. I've never seen issues with disk integrity when using this dual boot method.
@@ClickNextDemos Thanks for replying, the disk integrity part kinda sorted itself out as from a few days ago it just stoped showing up on boot and nothing apears to damaged or corrupted, still, the 100% disk usage on win 10 for several minutes after boot still persists, not a massive deal breaker just annoying, do you think it is the fact win 7 is the host?
The solution mentioned worked for me. I own an Acer Predator Helios 16 laptop, which originally came with Windows 11, including pre-installed drivers and applications. When I installed a new operating system from the Microsoft site, all the pre-installed software was removed. I'm curious if there's a way to create a copy of the laptop's original operating system, complete with the pre-installed software, since the Windows license is included. I would like to install this copy in a VHDX file.
Yes, you can do this, take a look at Sysinternals Disk2VHD utility - learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/disk2vhd It's relatively simple to convert a real disk to an virtial disk. It might be a bit tricky getting it to boot using this multi-boot method but certainly should be possibe.
@@ClickNextDemos Thank you for the suggestion! I've taken a closer look at the Sysinternals Disk2VHD utility based on your recommendation. It appears that while this tool is indeed capable of converting a physical disk into a virtual hard disk (VHD or VHDX), there's a specific limitation that affects its use on the same machine where the conversion is performed. According to the guidance provided on the linked page, attaching the generated VHD or VHDX to the same system it was created on for booting purposes is advised against. This is because Windows will alter the disk signature of the VHD to prevent a signature clash with its source disk. The boot configuration database (BCD) in Windows uses disk signatures to identify disks, leading to a potential scenario where Windows, when booted within a VM, cannot find the boot disk due to the changed signature. I'm curious if there's an alternative approach or a workaround for this limitation that still allows for the use of the same machine. Your thoughts or any differing perspective on this would be greatly appreciated.
@@KaustubhKelvekar I've never thought about doing what you are trying to do, but failing Sysinternals Disk2VHD. another idea off the top of my head is to capture your original OS, including drivers and apps etc using the DISM utility (and WinPE). A bit of a learning curve if you have not used it before but may be an option for doing what you want to do. You would capture your OS to a WIM file. Then deploy that WIM file to a VHDX file. Not entirely sure if it's possible to do that but worth looking into.
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?
No, this method requires Windows 8, 10 or 11. At a push it may be possible to get Windows 7 working but it's complicated due to UEFI and Secure Boot support in Windows 7, which is why I say Windows 8 or higher.
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
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
hmm why is it better than just having another disk? cant find why this is "smarter" the only advantage i can find is if sometimes you want to boot to the other os as an vm in hyper-v or something..
Hey @adiariel6726 , thanks for the comment. Well, it was just the thumbnail that said it was smarter, I didn't say that in the video. A bit of clickbait maybe? 😉 Having said that, in my opinion, here are some reasons why I think it's a "smarter" solution than a second disk or re-partitioning a single disk. If you use a laptop for example. Virtually no laptops have the option to have a second disk installed. Even micro pc's might not be able to fit a second disk. Even if you could fit a second disk, that's an additional cost if you don't already have one spare. If the disk is a spinning disk as opposed to an SSD, then it's going to use more power and generate additional heat in the system. If you want several additional OS installs, then installing to a virtual disk is much simpler and cleaner than creating individual partitions for each OS. It's also much simpler to remove them if you no longer want them, and also much easier to resize the disk when needed. It may not suit every scenario but it's certainly a better "smarter" option in a lot of cases (In my opinion).
It's not a VM. You will be running the OS natively on the the physical computer, so it will act like any other Windows PC. The only bit that is virtual is the storage, which is a VHD/VHDX file which acts like a real disk. I'm not familiar with ROBLOX but I expect it would work.
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!
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.
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
No, this method only supports Windows OS (Windows 8 and above), although you could combine this method with the traditional dual boot method where you repartition the disk and install Linux to a separate partition.
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.
plz show us how to Install Ubuntu Linux to VHDX , i want to dual boot linux with windows 11 but since its very complicated process i was unable to install linux till today due to some errors but this method is truly revolutionary i didnt knew this method even though I'm using windows OS for 10 years , teach us how to install linux in similar way .......
Might be possible to get it to work with Widows 7 but likely to be tricky. It depends on your main PC / Host PC and whether it is configured to use the legacy BIOS / MBR partition or the newer UEFI partition layout. Also only 64 bit version of Windows 7 had any support for UEFI. I recommended against in the video as I suspect most people will be using the more mordern UEFU partition layout and will have difficulty getting it work.
Yes that seems to be tricky to do. Several people have asked about this and it seems like it should be easy to do, but I have not yet found a succesful way to isolate the OS. For now, all I can suggest, if you really need to isolate the OS from another OS on the same machine is by using virtualisation, Hyper-V, VMWare Workstation or VirtualBox will all do that but then you lose the ability to run additioanl OS natively, so it depends on your needs.
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.
You can use a pendrive / usb media for physical machines, or an ISO for Virtual Machines. You can download Windows 11 from -: www.microsoft.com/software-download/windows11 Or Windows 10 from www.microsoft.com/en-gb/software-download/windows10 You can use the Media Creation Tool to conver the ISO into a Pendrive / USB Flash Drive.
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.
for some reason CMD.exe will not allow me to selct any other disk apart from the USB which comes onto the command prompt as X:\sources>. . I can see the disk where i put the virtual directory with diskpart. and see all the volumes too. But It wont allow me to change drives. The (. : ) does not work.
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?
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?
a friend has a blade server he wants to have 4 os on it for a ded game.. can one win10 license be used for 4 installs?? also would Microsoft Windows Server run better on it thank for the vid
To the best of my knowledge, once the first Windows 10 OS is successfully activated, any additional Windows 10 OS's on the same physical hardware will auto activate. If it is a blade server, a Windows Server OS may run better assuming all the device drivers are installed.
@@Goofy4u223 It's worth a try if you don't mind spending the time installing it, you can always re-install Windows 11 if Server doesn't work. I've actually tried this in the past, I was curious if I could use Windows Server as a workstation including gaming. It's so close to being possible, most things worked fine, like graphics and audio drivers, the only thing that didn't work was an XBOX contoller, I couldn't install a driver for it.
@@ClickNextDemos thx again for the reply.. last question, is there any benefit making a multi boot system this way.. or installing the os on a other drives..
Windows XP is not supported for this method of dual booting. Technically, Windows Vista and above, but I would recommend against using it for anything below Windows 8.
Hello, genius method !! but it didn't work for me. When I click on Next after selecting the created vdisk Windows says: "Windows could not prepare the computer to boot into the next phase of installation. To install Windows, restart the installation". And if I do I enter an infinite loop :) I guess windows cannot automatically attach/mount the vdisk on first restart to continue installation. Can't figure out how to sort that out.
maybe try to plug an installation usb it could help (you can just take a usb stich and use media crator tool from microsoft) it worked for me in windows 8
I have created a VHDx disk of 80 GB with its file saved in my Storage drive. Now i want to delete the Virtual Drive, Its just created, nothing installed or saved into the Disk-Virtual. Now i want to reclaim the spaced given to the disk. Here THE DISK means Virtual disk.
You can simply delete the vhdx file like any other file and the disk space will be reclaimed back to your main OS. You need to make sure the vhdx disk is unmounted so the file is not in use, otherwise it will not allow you to delete it.
This is a great video thank you. I do have a question i have 2 m.2 drives on my pc 1 is a 990pro and the other a 970. The parent os is on the 970, i will call c drive. I want to install a second copy of windows of the 990 as gaming only. Could i just install windows to that other drive without making a virtual drive on the 990? Im sorta confused as to where the boot originates. I know in my bios it looks at the 970 first. I would like to see a video with 2 physical hdds have the boot choice
Hi @SilentStorm585. - Great question. Yes, you absolutely can install nother copy of Windows on a second disk. It can be a real disk, it doesn't have to be a virtual disk. Follow the same process in the video but ignore the bit about creating a virtual disk. Just ensure both disks are connected then boot the PC from your Windows installation media and follow the setup wizard. When it asks "Where do you want to install Windows", just select your second disk from the list. Your original parent OS will most likely show as disk 0, and the second disk (the 990) will show as disk 1. If the 990 has been used before, you will want to delete all the existing volumes/partions fist, then highlight the disk and click install. (So backup any data you want to keep from the 990 before formatting). Windows wil then install to the second disk. The Windows setup wizard will modify the boot info on your parent OS to add the boot menu, just like it shows in this video. If you decided to go ahead and do this, let me know how you get on.
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.
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
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.
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
Not sure I understand the question, but regardless of what operating system you choose as an additional OS, you will need to do an install for it to the VHD.
You could add a Linux OS but not using this method, you would need to install it to a seperate disk or partition, but it could co-exist with multiple versions of Windows using this method. Hope that helps and thanks for the question.
@@ClickNextDemosthanks! I tried it and it works!! Can I just ask one more questions. The saving directory of the VHDX. Does it need to be on the c drive? Can I put into a second ssd like d drive?
This is such a cool feature, but I just have few question... 1. Activation - My laptop came with OEM licence...so if I install multiple OS, let's say my host is win11 and I want to install win10...will win10 be activated? 2. Drive selecting options: As of now, I have a 512GB SSD as my main drive and a 1TB SSD as my secondary drive. Can I do the same but instead have the vhdx files in my secondary drive? 3. I have veracrypt encryption enabled (win11 Home..no bitlocker unfortunately), do I have to disable veracrypt to use this feature? I know these might be silly, but I really like this feature and want to use it. Help is appreciated..
Hi, great questions. I wish I would have thought about that when making the video. The answer to question 2 is yes, you can put the VHDX file anywhere, as long as your pc can see the disk then it will work fine. To give you an accurate answer to question 1 and 3 - I would need to test it which I will try and do for you. I think if your pc is already activated for Windows 10 I think it will automatically activate Windows 11 and the first OS will continue to be activated. I'll test it out. Regarding the veracrypt, I'm pretty sure you would need to decrypt the drive first, install all your OS then re-encrypt the drive. It would certainly complicate things and you would lose the ability to mount other VHDX files from one OS if you wanted to access files on them, but you might not want or need to do that anyway. Will try and test and let you know the outcome.
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?
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.
A compact solution and fully packed tutorial for windows 10 lovers but wanna give the 11 a try , too.
Thanks
Super star, exactly wat I was looking for. Great demo. Tar very much
Thanks - Glad you liked it!
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 :)
Thanks man! super helpful! To my dismay I found ur video right after finishing creating the partition so... rip me but is good to know for the future!
haha, that's unfortunate but at least you know for next time. :)
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.
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.
Very good tutorial, worked well apart from 2 small things, when i boot i get a check for disk integrity for \?\, skipping the check does not apear to impact the anything in my main boot(win 7), but it lags to a unusable degree if i do the check(like, 1 fps) but goes back to normal if i restart and ignore it, and my windows 10 dual boot is working fine, has the same check but when its finished nothing apears to change, if i restart onto it later it asks to do it again so at the time i just keep skipping it, the main problem i have is that when on win10 it uses 100% of the disk and takes about 6-7 min on desktop to be responsive while still using a lot(it does not happen in my main system), may it be because im using win 7 as the host, or am i missing some setting in bios?
Thanks for the comment. Sorry, I don't know what is going on in your case. I've never seen issues with disk integrity when using this dual boot method.
@@ClickNextDemos Thanks for replying, the disk integrity part kinda sorted itself out as from a few days ago it just stoped showing up on boot and nothing apears to damaged or corrupted, still, the 100% disk usage on win 10 for several minutes after boot still persists, not a massive deal breaker just annoying, do you think it is the fact win 7 is the host?
wondered if you can add a windows 98 partition on a windows 8.1 computer?
The solution mentioned worked for me. I own an Acer Predator Helios 16 laptop, which originally came with Windows 11, including pre-installed drivers and applications. When I installed a new operating system from the Microsoft site, all the pre-installed software was removed. I'm curious if there's a way to create a copy of the laptop's original operating system, complete with the pre-installed software, since the Windows license is included. I would like to install this copy in a VHDX file.
Yes, you can do this, take a look at Sysinternals Disk2VHD utility -
learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/disk2vhd
It's relatively simple to convert a real disk to an virtial disk. It might be a bit tricky getting it to boot using this multi-boot method but certainly should be possibe.
@@ClickNextDemos Thank you for the suggestion! I've taken a closer look at the Sysinternals Disk2VHD utility based on your recommendation. It appears that while this tool is indeed capable of converting a physical disk into a virtual hard disk (VHD or VHDX), there's a specific limitation that affects its use on the same machine where the conversion is performed. According to the guidance provided on the linked page, attaching the generated VHD or VHDX to the same system it was created on for booting purposes is advised against. This is because Windows will alter the disk signature of the VHD to prevent a signature clash with its source disk. The boot configuration database (BCD) in Windows uses disk signatures to identify disks, leading to a potential scenario where Windows, when booted within a VM, cannot find the boot disk due to the changed signature. I'm curious if there's an alternative approach or a workaround for this limitation that still allows for the use of the same machine. Your thoughts or any differing perspective on this would be greatly appreciated.
@@KaustubhKelvekar I've never thought about doing what you are trying to do, but failing Sysinternals Disk2VHD. another idea off the top of my head is to capture your original OS, including drivers and apps etc using the DISM utility (and WinPE). A bit of a learning curve if you have not used it before but may be an option for doing what you want to do. You would capture your OS to a WIM file. Then deploy that WIM file to a VHDX file. Not entirely sure if it's possible to do that but worth looking into.
I think you should make a video about Windows 8.1 operating system installed on a 2023 pc configuration and must be a real machine
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?
How
i want to install windows XP can I do it by this way
No, this method requires Windows 8, 10 or 11. At a push it may be possible to get Windows 7 working but it's complicated due to UEFI and Secure Boot support in Windows 7, which is why I say Windows 8 or higher.
@@ClickNextDemos can I run visual basics 6.0 in windows 7
or can I run visual basics on windows 8
@@ClickNextDemos If you don't want a bunch of people commenting this why don't you put a damn warning
Can I dual boot kali linux pls on win 10 reply pls sir😢
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
Shift + f10 doesn’t work on my laptop ☹️
The function keys on laptops usually have dual functionality and the fn key toggles between the two functions.
Try pressing Shift fn f10
Daaam! This is the best information ever.
Thanks
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?
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.
hmm why is it better than just having another disk? cant find why this is "smarter" the only advantage i can find is if sometimes you want to boot to the other os as an vm in hyper-v or something..
Hey @adiariel6726 , thanks for the comment.
Well, it was just the thumbnail that said it was smarter, I didn't say that in the video.
A bit of clickbait maybe? 😉
Having said that, in my opinion, here are some reasons why I think it's a "smarter" solution than a second disk or re-partitioning a single disk.
If you use a laptop for example. Virtually no laptops have the option to have a second disk installed. Even micro pc's might not be able to fit a second disk.
Even if you could fit a second disk, that's an additional cost if you don't already have one spare.
If the disk is a spinning disk as opposed to an SSD, then it's going to use more power and generate additional heat in the system.
If you want several additional OS installs, then installing to a virtual disk is much simpler and cleaner than creating individual partitions for each OS.
It's also much simpler to remove them if you no longer want them, and also much easier to resize the disk when needed.
It may not suit every scenario but it's certainly a better "smarter" option in a lot of cases (In my opinion).
8:48 Could've said this at the start! 🤬 Win7FTW!
Just kidding. Great video!
All I get wen trying to install windows on the attached disk is error 0x80300024
Thank you for the detail sharing 🙏
Will ROBLOX work on this Virtual Hard Disk? ROBLOX isn't compatible with VM. But will it detect it as a Virtual Machine?
It's not a VM. You will be running the OS natively on the the physical computer, so it will act like any other Windows PC. The only bit that is virtual is the storage, which is a VHD/VHDX file which acts like a real disk. I'm not familiar with ROBLOX but I expect it would work.
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.
Wow, you have saved my time and effort....
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.
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
Would I work with win 11 and Linux?
No, this method only supports Windows OS (Windows 8 and above), although you could combine this method with the traditional dual boot method where you repartition the disk and install Linux to a separate partition.
Istall alll windiws 95 98 7 8.1 9 10
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.
Great and concise tutorial!
thanks
plz show us how to Install Ubuntu Linux to VHDX , i want to dual boot linux with windows 11 but since its very complicated process i was unable to install linux till today due to some errors but this method is truly revolutionary i didnt knew this method even though I'm using windows OS for 10 years , teach us how to install linux in similar way .......
Thanks for the suggestion. I'm not that knowledgeable about Linux but I may take a look and see how feasible it is with this method of dual booting.
is it not possible to install windows 7 with any of these methods? ive been trying to get this for 3 hours and i get nothing, why is it like this?
Might be possible to get it to work with Widows 7 but likely to be tricky. It depends on your main PC / Host PC and whether it is configured to use the legacy BIOS / MBR partition or the newer UEFI partition layout. Also only 64 bit version of Windows 7 had any support for UEFI. I recommended against in the video as I suspect most people will be using the more mordern UEFU partition layout and will have difficulty getting it work.
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 😂
i was hoping to isolate the two OS from one another. i'm guessing this is not the method?
Yes that seems to be tricky to do. Several people have asked about this and it seems like it should be easy to do, but I have not yet found a succesful way to isolate the OS.
For now, all I can suggest, if you really need to isolate the OS from another OS on the same machine is by using virtualisation, Hyper-V, VMWare Workstation or VirtualBox will all do that but then you lose the ability to run additioanl OS natively, so it depends on your needs.
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.
Would this work if windows 7 was the host and windows 11 was on the VHD?
Yes that will work fine on Windows 7.
Windows 7 only supports VHD files and not the newer VHDX files but the process works as shown in the video.
What u did installation media did u inserted a pendrive
You can use a pendrive / usb media for physical machines, or an ISO for Virtual Machines. You can download Windows 11 from -:
www.microsoft.com/software-download/windows11
Or Windows 10 from
www.microsoft.com/en-gb/software-download/windows10
You can use the Media Creation Tool to conver the ISO into a Pendrive / USB Flash Drive.
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.
for some reason CMD.exe will not allow me to selct any other disk apart from the USB which comes onto the command prompt as X:\sources>. . I can see the disk where i put the virtual directory with diskpart. and see all the volumes too. But It wont allow me to change drives. The (. : ) does not work.
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?
Gr8, very helpful, thx
Glad to hear that!
amazing!
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?
I guess one should be able to get all the tweaks done on the VHD and then clone the VHD to a SSD?
a friend has a blade server he wants to have 4 os on it for a ded game.. can one win10 license be used for 4 installs??
also would Microsoft Windows Server run better on it
thank for the vid
To the best of my knowledge, once the first Windows 10 OS is successfully activated, any additional Windows 10 OS's on the same physical hardware will auto activate. If it is a blade server, a Windows Server OS may run better assuming all the device drivers are installed.
@@ClickNextDemos thanks for the reply.. would Windows Server OS still be the better choice even if its just s game server ??
@@Goofy4u223 It's worth a try if you don't mind spending the time installing it, you can always re-install Windows 11 if Server doesn't work. I've actually tried this in the past, I was curious if I could use Windows Server as a workstation including gaming. It's so close to being possible, most things worked fine, like graphics and audio drivers, the only thing that didn't work was an XBOX contoller, I couldn't install a driver for it.
@@ClickNextDemos thx again for the reply.. last question, is there any benefit making a multi boot system this way..
or installing the os on a other drives..
some) chromebooks can run windows 10(so i presume 11/tiny11) but is it possible to multiboot to either chrome OS or windows....
Not with this method, but not sure if other methods exist. You are probably getting into multi partition territory if it is possible.
What about Windows XP?
Windows XP is not supported for this method of dual booting. Technically, Windows Vista and above, but I would recommend against using it for anything below Windows 8.
@@ClickNextDemos I wish I knew that before watching this video
Hello, genius method !! but it didn't work for me. When I click on Next after selecting the created vdisk Windows says: "Windows could not prepare the computer to boot into the next phase of installation. To install Windows, restart the installation". And if I do I enter an infinite loop :)
I guess windows cannot automatically attach/mount the vdisk on first restart to continue installation. Can't figure out how to sort that out.
maybe try to plug an installation usb it could help (you can just take a usb stich and use media crator tool from microsoft) it worked for me in windows 8
I have created a VHDx disk of 80 GB with its file saved in my Storage drive. Now i want to delete the Virtual Drive, Its just created, nothing installed or saved into the Disk-Virtual. Now i want to reclaim the spaced given to the disk. Here THE DISK means Virtual disk.
You can simply delete the vhdx file like any other file and the disk space will be reclaimed back to your main OS. You need to make sure the vhdx disk is unmounted so the file is not in use, otherwise it will not allow you to delete it.
Shows up as an MSR for some reason
This is a great video thank you. I do have a question i have 2 m.2 drives on my pc 1 is a 990pro and the other a 970. The parent os is on the 970, i will call c drive. I want to install a second copy of windows of the 990 as gaming only. Could i just install windows to that other drive without making a virtual drive on the 990? Im sorta confused as to where the boot originates. I know in my bios it looks at the 970 first. I would like to see a video with 2 physical hdds have the boot choice
Hi @SilentStorm585. - Great question. Yes, you absolutely can install nother copy of Windows on a second disk. It can be a real disk, it doesn't have to be a virtual disk.
Follow the same process in the video but ignore the bit about creating a virtual disk.
Just ensure both disks are connected then boot the PC from your Windows installation media and follow the setup wizard. When it asks "Where do you want to install Windows", just select your second disk from the list.
Your original parent OS will most likely show as disk 0, and the second disk (the 990) will show as disk 1.
If the 990 has been used before, you will want to delete all the existing volumes/partions fist, then highlight the disk and click install. (So backup any data you want to keep from the 990 before formatting).
Windows wil then install to the second disk. The Windows setup wizard will modify the boot info on your parent OS to add the boot menu, just like it shows in this video.
If you decided to go ahead and do this, let me know how you get on.
That's most useful . . . Now I can install XP and regain access to my (rather expensive) scanner 😁
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.
Thanks. This is one of the best video I've ever seen because I never knew this things.
Thanks, glad you liked it.
Nice and clear - worked a treat for me updating from 10 to 11 !
is it possible to create one windows ang copy paste or clone it into other computer??thanks
Maybe be possible but the tricky part is making the copied virtual disk bootable. It's probably easier to just install it from scratch.
very good video and very well explained so much easier to do it how you have shown
Thanks, glad you liked it.
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
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.
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
you didn't mention linux
As far as I know, it’s not possible to install Linux to a virtual hard disk vhdx file using this method, otherwise I would have included it.
Great vid man if, if running dual boot with win 11 on both do we need a extra install for win 11?
Not sure I understand the question, but regardless of what operating system you choose as an additional OS, you will need to do an install for it to the VHD.
@@ClickNextDemos Sorry missed a word so for the 2nd win11 install on the virtual drive do we need a MS key for that one?
No, if your first OS is already activated, then the 2nd OS will also be activated.
can i use Linux?
You could add a Linux OS but not using this method, you would need to install it to a seperate disk or partition, but it could co-exist with multiple versions of Windows using this method. Hope that helps and thanks for the question.
if i wan to make 3 new windows. does this mean i need to create 3 VHDX in disk management?
Yes that’s correct.
@@ClickNextDemos does this work for all brands of laptops? I have a Lenovo Legion 5 Pro
@@LuvFire It works for any laptop that runs Windows including your Lenovo Legion 5 Pro. Nice laptop by the way.
@@ClickNextDemosthanks! I tried it and it works!! Can I just ask one more questions. The saving directory of the VHDX. Does it need to be on the c drive? Can I put into a second ssd like d drive?
@@LuvFire Yes, should work fine. As long as your computer can see the additional disk, you can place the VDHX file there.
This is such a cool feature, but I just have few question...
1. Activation - My laptop came with OEM licence...so if I install multiple OS, let's say my host is win11 and I want to install win10...will win10 be activated?
2. Drive selecting options: As of now, I have a 512GB SSD as my main drive and a 1TB SSD as my secondary drive. Can I do the same but instead have the vhdx files in my secondary drive?
3. I have veracrypt encryption enabled (win11 Home..no bitlocker unfortunately), do I have to disable veracrypt to use this feature?
I know these might be silly, but I really like this feature and want to use it. Help is appreciated..
Hi, great questions. I wish I would have thought about that when making the video. The answer to question 2 is yes, you can put the VHDX file anywhere, as long as your pc can see the disk then it will work fine.
To give you an accurate answer to question 1 and 3 - I would need to test it which I will try and do for you.
I think if your pc is already activated for Windows 10 I think it will automatically activate Windows 11 and the first OS will continue to be activated. I'll test it out.
Regarding the veracrypt, I'm pretty sure you would need to decrypt the drive first, install all your OS then re-encrypt the drive.
It would certainly complicate things and you would lose the ability to mount other VHDX files from one OS if you wanted to access files on them, but you might not want or need to do that anyway.
Will try and test and let you know the outcome.
@@ClickNextDemos Thank you for the quick response and yea, I'll be waiting for your response.😊
@@ClickNextDemos Hey
I tried installing win11 and the licence worked for both. And I think it will work with win10 too..
@@KarthikEswara_Reddy That's great.
There are loads of activation codes online if you just google!