What I am trying to say is that I would want to do a Windows install on a physical (SSD) drive and have the ability to not only boot it up on a actual machine and also on a virtual machine without Windows complaining about activation. I mainly run Linux and it would nice to be able to run Windows side by side with Linux when doing something that is not resource intensive but then be able to boot to Windows if I need more raw power.
I was wondering if there is a way to have an SSD that is hocked up through SATA think that it is a Windows to go install, or would this be impossible.
Hello! I am currently in a similar situation as the one described by the op of this post: 2 SSD’s, one with windows and the other with linux, and want to use linux as a host with windows in vm for games (GPU will be passthrough’ed) but also being able to run windows natively when I want to.
The original post is kind of ancient, but since it’s here I guess there’s no need to create a new one.
After a bit of searching, I’ve found out that the main issue is Windows complaining when the hardware it sees is changed and in some cases even not being able to boot at all (vm emulated hardware differs from actual computer’s hardware).
However, I have seen people saying it’s possible. For example, the video posted by the op in his previous reply, and this quote from VMware Workstation support page:
“The general approach for resolving these issues is to set up profiles for each of the two operating environments — the virtual machine and the physical computer. You can then choose the appropriate profile when you start the operating system.” https://www.vmware.com/support/ws55/doc/ws_disk_dualboot_sameos.html
So I guess it’s doable somehow. Does anyone have any idea how to do it, or provide any reference/link so I can keep searching?