Hey everyone!
I got my desktop with dual boot (Kubuntu & W11) and wanted to know if I ever go fully Kubuntu, am I able to reinstall Windows again?
I don’t have a disc, but my desktop came with it pre-installed. Is it tied to my Live account?
You can download the Windows ISO from Microsoft. The Windows License information is stored in your BIOS, IIRC
Just as pee is stored in the balls, sure. Any computer with a BIOS that did the bidding of Windows like that is automatically insecure garbage. Thankfully it isn’t a thing, your license info is stored by Microsoft attached to your account.
It really is.
sudo strings /sys/firmware/acpi/tables/MSDMSpec straight from Microsoft: https://download.microsoft.com/download/1/3/8/13818231-a8ad-4fe7-b4e1-a63cbc5d6027/microsoft-software-licensing-tables.docx
An UEFI shell application that can extract it as well: https://blog.fpmurphy.com/2018/01/accessing-acpi-msdm-from-uefi-shell.html
it really is. pee is stored in the balls
I stand corrected on everything except it being insecure garbage.
Why is it insecure to store a string? I think you’re being overly dramatic, those keys are OEM anyways so it’s not insecure for Windows and it’s not insecure for you.
At the very least try to do some research before posting something both daft and pompous
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I just set up a brand new Lenovo laptop today, that came with Win11. I quickly decided Win11 was hot garbage, and installed Win10, removing all partitions and wiping all drives. I never signed into a Microsoft acct on the machine, created only a local acct in Win11 and again in Win10.
When I installed 10, it never asked me for a product key, which had me scratching my head, until I googled and found that it had already activated Win10 home and how I could activate pro.
Long story short, it does appear that newer laptops have the key in their hardware somehow.
Anyway, the writing is on the wall - I can’t keep going with Windows. Which led me to lurking here.
I know all the words, and yet they make no sense. Are you being snarky? I am new here and trying to learn, and happened to have an experience relevant to the conversation this morning.
I do not know about W11 (using only Linux since 2000) but usually when installing Windows this is going to wipe out your whole disk, including any other os. That is why to have two (three or four) os you should install windows first, then any other os, the opposite is more like…a problem.
Can confirm, Windows does not give a single fuck about anything else you’re trying to do, will assume every drive is just more space for Windows and steamroller your entire system lol. Much easier to just let it do what it wants first, and then repartition everything to the correct shape when you install Linux afterwards.
You can install windows to a selected Unallocated Space and it will create its partitions, but if it detects an EFI partition, even in a different drive, it uses that for windows.
I do not use windows since year 2000. What windows version started that? Remember that there was a windows bootloader that could do this but i did not care to learn about, it was not worth of.
You can download the windows iso from windows webpage, but if I remember correctly you have to do it in Windows since it depends on a downloader program. Then you should store the windows cd-key just in case, you shouldn’t need it and there are ways to recover it from Linux if this is an OEM machine, but it’s always better safe than sorry.
With all that being said, a bit of unpopular opinion now. Why do you want to do that? I kept a windows partition for years because I never knew if I would need it, it was only when I realised I hadn’t touched Windows in months that I felt comfortable removing it, and at that time I didn’t cared if it could be reinstalled. The reason I’m asking is because if you have to ask about it you probably never installed windows on a machine, so you don’t know how to do that, and it’s a lot more complex than Linux because Windows needs all of the drivers to be manually installed to work properly, and while Windows 10 is a bit better in finding those drivers automatically it’s still a Pain in the ass to ensure it got the correct things and wait the thousands of reboots to apply all updates because updates are cumulative in Windows.
You can download the windows iso from windows webpage, but if I remember correctly you have to do it in Windows since it depends on a downloader program.
It only forces you to use the media creation tool on Windows, everything else it gives you a link to download the ISO.
I kept a windows partition for years because I never knew if I would need it, it was only when I realised I hadn’t touched Windows in months that I felt comfortable removing it
I’m exactly the same.
everything else it gives you a link to download the ISO.
Then that’s new, you had to jump through some hoops to get the iso before, I remember just giving up and going to my sister’s computer to download it back then.
You can get the Isos from the installer page too installer is just there for people who don’t know how to/don’t want to flash it themselves
The media creator runs perfectly in wine. But isos are easy to find as well.
Since presuming the computer came with Windows activated preinstalled, then the license key is likely embedded into the BIOS of the device. Reinstalling Windows will not void that license key because you already paid for it with the “windows tax.” I’ve reinstalled windows on my pre-built “gaming” PC and the license activated automatically.
There are some pains getting a USB bootable installer image with Windows on a full GNU/Linux system, but it is entirely possible. It’s also possible to virtualize windows with GPU pass-through or use Wine/Proton which should always be examined before attempting to reinstall Windows (which is always a last resort).
I just want to reiterate that it is a major pain creating a bootable Windows installation USB drive on a Linux or macOS system. It’d be prudent to create it before installing Linux or make sure you have another Windows computer accessible to you to avoid some headaches if needed.
Ventoy, Ventoy, Ventoy .
If you wanna dual boot, I’d recommend installing windows 1st, Linux 2nd. The windows installer has a very high chance to mess up the Linux bootloader, even if you tell it not to touch that particular partition
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I tried that once, technically possible but it wouldn’t let me login on the install I had been using long term previously (seemed fine on a completely fresh install)
Need windows little enough that I’ve just put my existing license in a fresh VM instead
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Perfect, thanks a bunch for the replies! Seems I’ll be trying to go full Kubuntu soon then, now that Steam’s Proton is doing so well!
I’m kind of doing something similar. I built a machine from scratch and installed arch Linux on it. Now I want to see if i can plug in a hard drive from an older computer that already had windows on it. Then dual boot from that. Not sure what I’ll run into but I’m probably going to try it this weekend.
should work just fine just look at the wiki for os-prober to get it in your grub menu
I’m running that and I don’t have any issues. I just have to go to bios instead of using a boot manager.
if your using grub you just need to install os-prober and re build your grub config and then you can boot windows from grub even on multiple drives
What desktop was it? I’m probably not getting anything anytime soon, but I’m curious for future
I got a lot of great advice on another thread recently (which I still need to go through) on how to get the dual boot going, would be nice to have it be like that out of the box.
Also one thing that might be relevant, sometimes reinstalling windows may cause issues with extra features tied to a particular version. This is second hand experience, a friend replaced an SSD and could no longer use certain features (bitlocker?) because they were only on the pro version of Windows. Somehow they were enabled before.
So I guess it’s less of a problem and more of “you may lose things that windows decided you weren’t supposed to have”
is it possible he forgot to select pro in the install menu a pro license will activate home no problem