Solved Have two instances of windows totally isolated and choose which one to use?

the_observer · Mar 5, 2023

Hi all.
What i want to accomplish is the below but i do not know if it is possible:
Short description of the problem:
I want to be able to have two instances of my pc totally isolated one from the other and choose which one to run every time.
Long description of the problem:
The idea is that i want to have two totally different windows installations in my pc , each one with it's own apps but to be completely separated from each other and to be able to choose which one i want to start with. What i only can think of, is having two disks (could be partitions of the same disk maybe) and somehow to chose one to be disabled at the start. I can do it by entering bios and disable the one disk (in case of two disks) but i wonder if it could be done another way since i am not so expert and maybe someone here know a solution i can not think of. Maybe dual boot is the solution. What do you think?

Any heads up will be much appreciated.

Thank you for your time reading this.

Regards,
Nik.

cereberus · Mar 5, 2023

Dual boot will do what you want but you will need to hide the other instance from each other by removing the drive letter of other instance.

TM21 · Mar 5, 2023

I do that (sort of) all the time. But to do it the way I do, you have to have two HD's installed on the PC.
That's usually easy on a Desktop PC (which I prefer) but usually impossible on a Laptop.
So which are you?

sgage · Mar 5, 2023

the_observer said:
Hi all.
What i want to accomplish is the below but i do not know if it is possible:
Short description of the problem:
I want to be able to have two instances of my pc totally isolated one from the other and choose which one to run every time.
Long description of the problem:
The idea is that i want to have two totally different windows installations in my pc , each one with it's own apps but to be completely separated from each other and to be able to choose which one i want to start with. What i only can think of, is having two disks (could be partitions of the same disk maybe) and somehow to chose one to be disabled at the start. I can do it by entering bios and disable the one disk (in case of two disks) but i wonder if it could be done another way since i am not so expert and maybe someone here know a solution i can not think of. Maybe dual boot is the solution. What do you think?

Any heads up will be much appreciated.

Thank you for your time reading this.

Regards,
Nik.

I have been dual-booting 2 separate instances of Windows for years. I simply have Win10 and Win11 on separate partitions, and a 3rd big partition for my 'stuff' that they both can access. I have even triple-booted a Win10, a Win11, and a Win11 Insider, but I don't do Insider any more. Never had any problems.

glasskuter · Mar 5, 2023

Dual boot or, if you have an old Windows 7 or 8 key that is not being used, use it to install an instance of 11 as a virtual machine.With a VM you do not have to get out of one instance of the OS to get into the other.

Bree · Mar 5, 2023

the_observer said:
I want to be able to have two instances of my pc totally isolated one from the other and choose which one to run every time.

I dual boot by having one of the Windows installs as a native boot vhdx.

Native Boot Windows 11 Virtual Hard Disk (VHDX)

This tutorial will show you how to boot a Windows 11 VHDX file natively to dual boot with Windows 10 or Windows 11. Native Boot allows you to create a virtual hard disk (VHDX), install Windows to it, and then boot it up, either on your PC side-by-side with your existing installation, or on a...

www.elevenforum.com

CountMike · Mar 6, 2023

I did have more than dual boot, actually at one time 4 OSs, some times with different partitions and some times on separate disks. Right now it's dual BOOT with W11 Insider dev on second SSD after I stopped using Linux Mint on third one, just no more use for it,
There are at lest 2 ways to do it. One is thru BIOS by choosing BOOT disk but that's long way.
Easier to make a BOOT menu in one of disks you designate (in BIOS) to be primary, It could be dome thru MSconfig.exe

Or use a program like EAsyBCD to make it

I don't practice it but you can always disable letter to the disk with other OS so it's not normally accessible.

the_observer · Mar 6, 2023

Thank you all for your answers.
To clarify that i do not want each instance to has any access to the other instance disk space, programs or anything.

I am not sure that dual boot can do it. CountMike's answer seems the most interesting . Also virtualization maybe a good way since i only want to run a couple programs in the new instance but have to be completely isolated from the rest of the data.

I will mark it as solved and if i have problems i will ask back.

Again thank you for your suggestions.

Regards,
Nik.

bob3d · Mar 6, 2023

the_observer said:
...
I am not sure that dual boot can do it. CountMike's answer seems the most interesting . Also virtualization maybe a good way since i only want to run a couple programs in the new instance but have to be completely isolated from the rest of the data.
...

I run VMware Workstation software to run either Windows 11, macOS 13 Ventura, or Ubuntu 22.11. I use this quite often and almost always have a VMware window open, usually with Windows 11 running in it since my host machine is still using Windows 10. I like to contrast and compare the two machines (physical and virtual) and analyze the differences. Rarely do I run into a problem where something will run in Windows 10 and won't run in Windows 11. I fact I can't think of a single problem I've run into while using the Windows 11 virtual machine.

- bob3d

Futurdreamz · Mar 6, 2023

I remember Mac os having the option to encrypt your boot partition so it couldn't be read by anyone but I don't really remember how it works. Is it possible to have both drives encrypted so whatever os you boot can decrypt it's own drive but not the other one?

Virtualizing would likely be less of a headache though, and if you have a clear primary OS it makes sense to just run the secondary when you need it.

CountMike · Mar 6, 2023

Futurdreamz said:
I remember Mac os having the option to encrypt your boot partition so it couldn't be read by anyone but I don't really remember how it works. Is it possible to have both drives encrypted so whatever os you boot can decrypt it's own drive but not the other one?

Virtualizing would likely be less of a headache though, and if you have a clear primary OS it makes sense to just run the secondary when you need it.

BitLocker with Windows.

Futurdreamz · Mar 6, 2023

CountMike said:
BitLocker with Windows.

encrypting one drive is easy, but can the hardware handle two independant drives with their own encryption? I'd suspect the TPM of only being able to hold one encyption key at this level.

the_observer · Mar 7, 2023

Thank you for your additional answers.

Probably the virtualization should be the best options. On the other hand i have not ever done one in windows 11 and i wonder, since i want to run only one program which is very demanding in system resources , will it be possible to give to the virtual pc all or at least the majority of pc resources or are there any limitations?

Winuser · Mar 8, 2023

If you do decide to dual boot, removing the drive letter of the drive you want to hide should do what you want.

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