SkullHex2Windows 10 keeps bugging me to use a Microsoft account
djtechwww.debian.org
WashedOverIs there a newbie way to install it? It looks pretty convoluted…
It’s easier than installing Windows. The problem is that someone hasn’t already done it for you.
ChaoticNeutralCzechYes. Did you know that you cannot partition disks in a GUI while installing Windows? You can only select partition to install to or format the entire disk, all advanced actions must be done with
diskpart commands in Command Prompt (Ctrl+F10).
Or just wait until you are booted into Windows and use the Diskmanager.
Honestly, these complains from you Linuxians are always just so dumb and not the big arguments you think they are.
Nope nope nope. This is actually more pain.
Why? Shrinking the C: drive is difficult or damn near impossible when Windows is installed on it, which is why I always install Windows to a smaller partition (120 GiB if I don’t want to install modern games) and move user folders to D:, and then leave some space for E: or Linux.
Disk Management will only let you shrink the disk by a very small amount. This is because Windows has a lot of “unmoveable files”. You need to disable recovery, virtual memory and hibernation to get a chance at shrinking that partition, and you may need to run all kinds of defrag commands. I did this on 4 PCs and the first 3 times, this was enough.
In the 4th case, just this week, I became sick and got stuck at my grandma’s place far from home. I needed a Linux installation badly, but there was only a laptop with 40 out of 220 GiB free after cleanup, and just a single partition (with Windows preinstalled, of course). It did not want to budge and reported 0 MB shrinkable space. I tried every trick mentioned online before resorting to buying Aomei Partition Assistant. It queued the action of shrinking the drive by 20 GiB (alleged minimum for Mint) and estimated 18 minutes to complete the operation. It told me it cannot do that while Windows was running so it gave me the option to use WinPE or PreOS mode. WinPE did not work so I retried with PreOS. The computer booted into VGA text mode and this appeared on the screen:
============== AOMEI Partition Assistant PreOS Mode ============== The program is executing, please wait... Operation 1 of 1 Resizing Partition Hard Disk: 1 Drive Letter: C: File System: NTFS Partition Label: OS Size: 220.46GB => 200.45GB Total:0 %, Current:0 %This was on the screen for about an hour, and the PC was apparently under load with fans spinning. The program might be stuck but could how could I tell? I eventually forced the computer to shut down. I hadn’t made a backup because I did not have an external drive (would have installed Linux on that, instead). Was my grandma’s only computer ruined? Would I be stuck for 2 weeks without a computer?
Luckily, the PreOS program ultimately had no effect on the drive, and I managed to negotiate a refund from Aomei. Then I realized I could boot into Recovery Mode and try diskpart from Command Prompt there, which miraculously worked. Also pretty tense because it did not give any indication of progress, just threw control back to me when it finished. I was relieved when I successfully booted into Windows on that shrunk partition. Other than having to enter Windows Safe Mode to disable RAID storage in BIOS, the Linux installation went fine.
Or you just don’t partition at all.
Never had a problem with it in the last 15 years on Windows. You can usually fix the OS with some command lines. And if you can’t, you just reinstall and Windows will move all your files into a Windows.old folder.
That’s not good use of space, storage is still expensive where I live (partly because of piracy tax). A simple copy to “Windows.old” will not save the bootloader so it won’t really work as a backup – it’s dead space now. Your OS partition (and the EFI one) must be copied bitwise if you need to back them up (but as you correctly mentioned, you probably don’t).
It makes a lot of sense to separate installation and data, especially when the PC will get used by old people (who are more likely to screw up something badly) or power users. And making backups of data is as easy as robocopy D: F:\Backup /mir. Yes, I also have lots of experience using and managing Windows PCs in my family and work.