Trying out Windows 11

Okay, so this may be a stupid question but here goes ...

Given that M$oft hold a digital licence to activate Windows, is there any way to install Windows 11 on a hard disk/SSD of a Windows 10 machine to "try before you buy" and if you upgrade to Win 11, is there any restriction in winding backwards to Windows 10 (apart from the 10/14 day thing?)

What I'm thinking is this.

Clone the HDD/SSD of a Windows 10 machine, do an upgrade to Windows 11 to "try it out", then either (a) carry on with Win 11 on the cloned drive or (b) re-fit the original Windows 10 HDD/SSD. Would this scenario work or would M$oft recognise that that particular machine had been upgraded to 11 and would no longer allow/let Win 10 to work (I'm also thinking of activated Office programs here too).

Alternatively, is it easy enough to partition a HDD/SSD and put Windows 11 in the new partition (is this a virtual disk?) and if yes,how exactly does one go about carrying out that procedure.

My wife's laptop wanted to suddenly upgrade to Windows 11 the other day and I don't think she'll be a fan. Having said that, I have very little knowledge of 11 apart from the fact that generally it isn't a well-liked OS and also that the TPM module essentially means kissing goodbye (possibly in the medium to longer term) to any thoughts of "privacy". A little knowledge is a dangerous thing - no?

Thanks in advance,

Art

ArthurDent said:

Okay, so this may be a stupid question but here goes ...

Given that M$oft hold a digital licence to activate Windows, is there any way to install Windows 11 on a hard disk/SSD of a Windows 10 machine to "try before you buy" and if you upgrade to Win 11, is there any restriction in winding backwards to Windows 10 (apart from the 10/14 day thing?)

Click to expand...

The PC's digital licence will activate Windows 10 or Windows 11, there is no difference as far as the activation servers are concerned, the digital licence is valid for both, you can swap between W10 and W11 as often as you like.

If you'd like to try out Windows 11 without having to upgrade your Windows 10, then you could dual boot with Windows 11 in a native boot vhdx file. As long as you install the same edition of Windows 11 as your current Windows 10 (Home or Pro) then both will activate from your PC's existing digital licence. You could even clone your W10 to the vhdx, then try the upgrade to W11.

Thanks for the quick reply Bree - however ...

I have no idea what a "native boot vhdx" file is, nor how to create one.

I'll take a look at the link you posted to see if that explains things.

Update: so the first thing I see is "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 new device." but then the first instruction says "Copy the Windows 11 VHDX file" and previously "The Windows 11 VHDX file used in this tutorial was created with a Hyper-V Windows 11 virtual machine, and copied to the OS to dual boot with."

Not making much sense so far it has to be said!


Art

ArthurDent said:

My wife's laptop wanted to suddenly upgrade to Windows 11 the other day and I don't think she'll be a fan.

Click to expand...

I have clients my age [84], a couple older and some younger, that are not having any issues with using Win11 but they don't dig into the mechanisms of Windows.

I got my first computer in '92, retired late '94 and week later had a job in a computer store, been using all versions since 3.1 and NT 3.5 since, never owned an ME or Vista but have had to work on them.

Berton said:

I have clients my age [84], a couple older and some younger, that are not having any issues with using Win11 but they don't dig into the mechanisms of Windows.

I got my first computer in '92, retired late '94 and week later had a job in a computer store, been using all versions since 3.1 and NT 3.5 since, never owned an ME or Vista but have had to work on them.

Click to expand...

Haha,

You don't know my wife. Luddite hardly covers it!

Art

You have my sympathy or I can suggest getting Refurbished computers. My wife has taken over my 13" refurb Dell Latitude I got in '19, hasn't broken it yet.

Looking into it, Hyper-V only seems to work on 64-bit Windows 10/11 Pro / Enterprise or Education, not Home.

The machine I had envisaged using as a test machine is only running Win10 Home

Is there a way to set up a VM on Windows 10 Home?

ArthurDent said:

Looking into it, Hyper-V only seems to work on 64-bit Windows 10/11 Pro / Enterprise or Education, not Home.

The machine I had envisaged using as a test machine is only running Win10 Home

Is there a way to set up a VM on Windows 10 Home?

Click to expand...

Native booting from a vhdx is NOT running a VM. The only thing 'virtual' about it is the drive it's running from. Instead of an HDD or SSD it's a .vhdx file that has been mounted as a virtual drive. You can easily create a virtual drive in Home, just use Disk Management.



Once a virtual drive has been mounted you can treat it as you would any other drive, partition it, format it, or clone another drive to it. All the normal tools can be used, Partition Wizard, for example. In fact, I'm running Windows 11 as a native boot .vhdx on the laptop I'm using now. The laptop has Windows 10 installed on its one and only SSD, and Disk 2, the virtual drive containing this Windows 11 is actually a .vhdx file in the E:Data partition on Disk 1.

Thanks once again, Bree

Can't sort this right now, it will be a few days as we are having the kitchen re-done (courtesy of last October's Storm Babet) and the house is in absolute turmoil (and wiil be until Friday this week) and there's no space to work!

Art

ArthurDent said:

Thanks once again, Bree

Can't sort this right now.....

Click to expand...

That's OK, there's no need to rush. At least you should understand the tutorial a bit better next time you read it.

ArthurDent said:

Okay, so this may be a stupid question but here goes ...

Given that M$oft hold a digital licence to activate Windows, is there any way to install Windows 11 on a hard disk/SSD of a Windows 10 machine to "try before you buy" and if you upgrade to Win 11, is there any restriction in winding backwards to Windows 10 (apart from the 10/14 day thing?)

What I'm thinking is this.

Clone the HDD/SSD of a Windows 10 machine, do an upgrade to Windows 11 to "try it out", then either (a) carry on with Win 11 on the cloned drive or (b) re-fit the original Windows 10 HDD/SSD. Would this scenario work or would M$oft recognise that that particular machine had been upgraded to 11 and would no longer allow/let Win 10 to work (I'm also thinking of activated Office programs here too).

Alternatively, is it easy enough to partition a HDD/SSD and put Windows 11 in the new partition (is this a virtual disk?) and if yes,how exactly does one go about carrying out that procedure.

My wife's laptop wanted to suddenly upgrade to Windows 11 the other day and I don't think she'll be a fan. Having said that, I have very little knowledge of 11 apart from the fact that generally it isn't a well-liked OS and also that the TPM module essentially means kissing goodbye (possibly in the medium to longer term) to any thoughts of "privacy". A little knowledge is a dangerous thing - no?

Thanks in advance,

Art

Click to expand...

Answering your question, yes you can clone the Win 10 to a HDD or SSD and then upgrade to Win 11.
As you have a unsupported hardware you must tweak your Win 11 installation files first.

@ArthurDent

Keep an eye out though.
If the computer says that 9x6=42, you'll "know" you're on Windows 11.

ArthurDent said:

is there any restriction in winding backwards to Windows 10 (apart from the 10/14 day thing?)

Click to expand...

Not for an intelligent & highly competent fella like yourself who has made a Windows 10 system image before updating to Windows 11.

And see
Roll Back to Previous Version of Windows - ElevenForumTutorials
See and Set Number of Days for Roll Back to Previous Version of Windows - ElevenForumTutorials


All the best,
Denis

ArthurDent said:

(apart from the 10/14 day thing?)

Click to expand...

Besides, you can extend the time limit beyond that.

Thank you all for the replies - including Ghot who seems to be a Frood who really seems to know where his towel is at!

Won't be able to do anything for a few days (see post#9). It is almost like we're living in a poky hotel room atm.

Art

ArthurDent said:

Thank you all for the replies - including Ghot who seems to be a Frood who really seems to know where his towel is at!

Won't be able to do anything for a few days (see post#9). It is almost like we're living in a poky hotel room atm.

Art

Click to expand...

Art,

Are you still considering the VHDX idea?
If so, we might usefully compare notes as we go along.
I've never had anything to do with VHDX before so we're both in the same boat.

I'm trying to run Windows 11 on a low spec [Chuwi Hi10Pro] Windows 10 Home computer that refuses to complete any In-place upgrade or Clean install procedure [possibly because it has a rather strange boot arrangement].
I used the tutorial to create a VHDX file on Windows 11 Home.
Create VHDX file - ElevenForumTutorials
And, when copying it across completes in an hour or so I will attempt to complete the job using this other tutorial.
Native Boot Windows 11 VHDX - ElevenForumTutorials

I'm going to test it out, play with it, for a while before turning to what will become my most serious concern, Windows 11 Version updates.
- I believe that routine & Cumulative updates will not be a problem.
- I've been collecting links to posts about VHDX Version updates. I don't yet understand the one that claims to be a solution and I'm hoping that my playing around will educate me sufficiently.

I did once try a sort-of-WindowsToGo arrangement and Windows 11 ran decently on this awkward computer but it all fell apart when I ran a Cumulative update.


All the best,
Denis

Try3 said:

I'm going to test it out, play with it, for a while before turning to what will become my most serious concern, Windows 11 Version updates.
- I believe that routine & Cumulative updates will not be a problem.
- I've been collecting links to posts about VHDX Version updates. I don't yet understand the one that claims to be a solution and I'm hoping that my playing around will educate me sufficiently.

Click to expand...

I have been using vhdx native boot for years now, mainly for dual booting Insider builds without disturbing the main install of Windows. There is just one thing I cannot do in a vhdx install, I cannot use Hibernate.



There's one precaution you need to be aware of. You have most likely chosen to use an expanding vhdx in order not to use up all your disk space. It is important to make sure that there is enough free space on the partition holding an expanding vhdx for it to temporarily expand to its maximum size while booted from. If the free space gets too low a native boot vhdx will BSoD at boot with the stop code: VHD BOOT HOST VOLUME NOT ENOUGH SPACE. If you are tight on space, it is perfectly possible to native boot from a .vhdx that is on an external drive, if that drive is an SSD it will be quite fast enough too be a practical solution. Also, note that the swapfile will not be in the vhdx, it will be created on the partition that holds the .vhdx file.



As for updates, there is no difference at all. Cumulative and other updates will install normally. The only catch is that, as with any dual boot PC, you will need to select the right OS after the restart so it can complete the install.

If you run Insider builds as I do then Feature Updates are a regular occurrence, typically weekly for the Dev and Canary channels. For Windows 10 it used to be that you couldn't perform an in-place upgrade for an OS on a vhdx. For Windows 11 that is no longer the case. That came as a pleasant surprise for me back in April 2022 when I started using native boot for the first time. This time you will not need to be careful to choose the right OS at reboot, a Feature Update will also set itself as being the default boot OS. You may want to change that back after the update completes.

Bree said:

Well, I was under the impression that you couldn't do an in-place upgrade on a native boot .vhdx system.

I had put a vhdx of 22593 on a little 2-in-1 convertible Lenovo Yoga 11e so that I could play with test the tablet optimised taskbar. When Windows Update offered the 22598 build I let it install, just to see what would happen. What happened was a completely normal and successful feature update....

Click to expand...

That vhdx install now has a long history of Feature Updates.

Bree,

Thank you so much for responding.

I had found an earlier post of yours that refers to a script somebody had written that made Version updates possible for VHDX but if I don't even have to bother with that all should be well.

I'm having to restart my VHDX attempt. My first attempt created a defective VHDX.


Back tomorrow,
Denis

Ghot said:

@ArthurDent

Keep an eye out though.
If the computer says that 9x6=42, you'll "know" you're on Windows 11.

Click to expand...

Well, of course, 9x6 does equal 42 if the unlucky 13 number is ised in a special way.