Can I dual boot another Windows 10 version WITHOUT Optane acceleration?

[Morash]

Hi all,

I need to install Windows 10 Enterprise in a separate partition on a 1TB+16GB Intel Optane Windows 10 Home system. I couldn't find a clear answer to this anywhere, though I have seen some threads discussing this topic and suggesting some workarounds for dual booting Ubuntu but not another Windows.

Intel website info is grey, and all it says is that multi booting is not supported or recommended and results can’t be guaranteed, but whether dual booting will work at all, even without accelerating the second Windows remains a mystery!

Frequently Asked Questions about Installation and Configuration for Intel® Optane™ Memory

My plan is to continue using Windows 10 Home as my primary OS with Optane enabled. Enterprise will just be used occasionaly for testing purpose with Hyper-v, so I'm not so particular about it beeing accelerated and won't install RST (hopefully I won't need to) or enable Optane.

Will this work and can I use dual boot in this case, or worse, is it going to damage my current installation? I saw that some users reported their systems becoming unbootable. I don't want to mess up my new laptop and end up doing a factory reset after having spent so much time updating it and installing various software!

Appreciate your replies.

[WAWood]

@Morash

You can always FORCE the installation of one or more other OSs on an OEM PC, but when you do that, although it does not violate the factory warranty per se, you DO take on all responsibility for maintaining the PC after that.

You would do best to make a full image backup of your PC before attempting this, as if anything goes wrong, you could have a very difficult time getting your PC back to its current state.

[Morash]

@WAWood

Thank you for your reply and reminder for taking precautionary measures.

I hope someone with prior experience in multi boot with Optane can provide some information and guidelines how to go about this especially if there are risks involved. I don’t want to be a guinea pig and blindly experiment with my new laptop.

Since my laptop is just one month old and still under warranty, I called my local HP support number and asked to speak to a technical advisor. He was unable to give me a clear answer if multi booting can work or not, or if any problems could arise as a result. He just referred me to the same Intel’s website which gives general information only. I find this very strange that HP includes in their products hardware which they don’t have enough information about.

[Morash]

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[Morash]

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[Morash]

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[WAWood · Accepted solution]

@Morash

Installing a second Windows OS, even if it does work, is going to cause an immediate problem in that your current OS is an HP OEM version, and if you copy that to install it, when you go to activate the copy, it will most likely NOT work -- as MS is probably going to see it as a different device, and if that fails, it could compromise your current activation.  That's a big risk to take -- IMHO.

If it were mine, I would do a full image backup so that I would then have a way to restore the current working setup without risk to it, PRIOR to experimenting with the other installation.

I personally prefer to use third-party Backup solutions as they tend to be both more flexible and more reliable than any built-in solutions.

Macrium Reflect (MR) provides a FREE version that can be used to image and restore partitions or entire drives.

What I recommend is the following:
1) Download and install Macrium Reflect (MR) from here: http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx
2) Run MR and choose the option: "Create an image of the partition(s) required to backup and restore Windows" to write a full backup to an external drive or USB stick
3) Use the option to create a boot USB stick or CD

My experience is that MR, when using the High Compression option, typically can compress the saved image file to about 50% of the USED space in the OS partition. This means if you have an 80GB OS partition, and 40GB is used, MR only needs about 20GB to store the image file.

I use this all the time and it typically takes less than 15 minutes to do the image backup and about the same time or less to do a restore.

NOW, you have the means to restore a full working system from the external drive or USB stick in only a few minutes.