Two Windows Installations on the same PC.

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balnazzar

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I own a regular windows 8.1 license, and I want to install the OS on two different partitions of my hard drive (one installation for serious work tasks, the other for games, tests, fun, etc, without constant fear of getting viruses or screwing things.. ).

I got only one license.

Now, what happens if I go ahead with second installation? Microsoft will remotely detect the second installation and will disable the first, or what? :rolleyes:

Thanks.
 
balnazzar said:
I own a regular windows 8.1 license, and I want to install the OS on two different partitions of my hard drive (one installation for serious work tasks, the other for games, tests, fun, etc, without constant fear of getting viruses or screwing things.. ).

I got only one license.

Now, what happens if I go ahead with second installation? Microsoft will remotely detect the second installation and will disable the first, or what? :rolleyes:

Thanks.
Click to expand...

Windows will not let you install twice to the same harddrive (very easily at least). There's no option to configure the computer to dual boot the same OS version from two different partitions or drives, you would have to manually configure your bootloader to support that. Most likely the easyest you can do is to install a second harddrive and make a clean windows install there. Then choose which side you want to use during bootup by selecting boot drive. License will be no problem since you will have the same hardware, both windows will activate fine.

Probably the easyest and smartest thing for you to do however is to install linux on top of windows. It will automatically configure a dual boot environment which lets you do browsing, banking etc. safely on linux and your games on windows. Of course if your work includes some windows only software, that won't be an option.
 
balnazzar said:
I own a regular windows 8.1 license, and I want to install the OS on two different partitions of my hard drive (one installation for serious work tasks, the other for games, tests, fun, etc, without constant fear of getting viruses or screwing things.. ).

I got only one license.

Now, what happens if I go ahead with second installation? Microsoft will remotely detect the second installation and will disable the first, or what? :rolleyes:

Thanks.
Click to expand...

The license will activate fine, and dual booting is possible, you just have to partition the drives properly. Here is a link to dual boot Windows 7 and 8, which would apply to 8 as well.

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/143380-how-to-dual-boot-windows-8-and-windows-7
 
Grimmy311 said:
The license will activate fine, and dual booting is possible, you just have to partition the drives properly. Here is a link to dual boot Windows 7 and 8, which would apply to 8 as well.

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/143380-how-to-dual-boot-windows-8-and-windows-7
Click to expand...

If the method in the link works with two instances of the same OS, he's going to have two identical Win8 options in the bootloader. The bootloader needs to be manually configured to make any sense.

A much better option is to do all the tasks requiring security on linux instead if his work doesn't require some exotic Windows software that is not found on linux or doesn't run on Wine.
 
To make identifying the installations easier after you get your dual-boot configuration running, you could try EasyBCD. I know I've used it for Windows 7 x86/x64 dual-boot configurations and I remember some chatter about Windows 8/8.1 support being included, so it should work. This would let you change the text displayed by the bootloader to whatever you want, i.e. Home and Work. There is a manual way of doing it by directly editing system files, but it is also nice to know that there is some software out there for those of us that are too lazy :D
 
It seems you have already have an answer..

But another option (other than linux) is to forget having to reboot at all. If you are going to be playing games with your personal machine, create a 'work' virtual machine and just launch that when you are working.
 
Why wouldn't you just create a VM inside windows 8 to run the second copy? Use that for browsing your pr0n sites without fearing viruses. Take a snapshot first, then revert back to the snapshot evertime you are done.
 
Biznatch said:
Why wouldn't you just create a VM inside windows 8 to run the second copy? Use that for browsing your pr0n sites without fearing viruses. Take a snapshot first, then revert back to the snapshot evertime you are done.
Click to expand...

Using an insecure host to host an insecure VM is not the best idea in the world. The VM can still infect the host machine if it has access to any shared folders or files.
 
Running a VM is not an ideal option for me. Gaming inside the VM is not feasible.
Also, doing serious stuff with VMs is hard, when the host get messed.
And don't forget performance drops for both host and guest. :rolleyes:

I cannot use linux, cause I got some win-only sw. Instead, is perfectly feasible to buy a second hdd for the second w8.1 installation.

Leaving apart all the installation details, I only wanted to know if the second installation may screw itself and/or the original installation by communicating, via internet, something to Microsoft.


Thanks. :)
 
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I would be concerned a little about the # of activations you will be doing. I have seen Windows try to barf after even as little as two activations on same key within a short time period (like a few days). Might not be an issue at all, won't know until you try.

Technically, that OS might only be licensed for one install/drive/partition. But some of us don't bother with licensing issues if it works. LOL
 
ir0nw0lf said:
I would be concerned a little about the # of activations you will be doing. I have seen Windows try to barf after even as little as two activations on same key within a short time period (like a few days). Might not be an issue at all, won't know until you try.

Technically, that OS might only be licensed for one install/drive/partition. But some of us don't bother with licensing issues if it works. LOL
Click to expand...

No technically the license is good for one _computer_. It makes no difference if it's installed on 100 partitions inside it, technically.
 
B00nie said:
Using an insecure host to host an insecure VM is not the best idea in the world. The VM can still infect the host machine if it has access to any shared folders or files.
Click to expand...

Which for security reasons it should not be shared.
 
jmilcher said:
Which for security reasons it should not be shared.
Click to expand...

Much better is to host the insecure guest on a secure host that can't be infected by Windows threats.

But as the OP pointed the problem remains, VMs are horrible for gaming. And even the dual harddrive dual boot does not solve the OPs problem at all because the 'clean' hdd will be mounted to the gaming OS also unless he plugs his drive off.

This means that regardless of booting from the other drive, if it gets infected with a virus it will inevitably infect also the 'clean' OS side if it's the injecting kind of spread.
 
Since its the same hardware, you can try abr app, backs up the activation file, you could restore that file to install 2 possibly. Not sure if the abr app works with 8, but I've done a dual install with 7
 
B00nie said:
No technically the license is good for one _computer_. It makes no difference if it's installed on 100 partitions inside it, technically.
Click to expand...

Please quote the portion of the license allowing this.
 
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