Trouble with dual Windows 11 boot

justaplaneguy0 · Jul 25, 2023

Hi everyone -

I'm having some difficulty doing a dual boot (2 separate Windows 11 OS installations) on a HP ZBook Fury 15 G7 workstation.

Admittedly, this is a work laptop, and it's locked down like fort knox security wise. Any changes to the BIOS result in a bitolocker recovery. Any changes to the boot manager, result in an error. The USB drives are locked out by carbonblack (no access). It's a real pain hence why I want a separate Windows 11 instance. Extremely difficult to install software and other apps without it throwing a carbon black message even though I'm an Administrator on the machine. It's all remotely security protected through carbon black. The work drive is completely encrypted, which is fine.

The Laptop has multiple ways of installing separate hard drives. The main drive exists under the keyboard, and i installed another separate drive in a separate slot on the underside of the laptop.

The only way I can sucessfully install a separate Win11 instance is through a separate drive and only if I remove the original drive and have the new drive installed by itself. The problem is if I install the original drive after doing this, I can still only boot the original Win11 instance and not the new personal one. If I change the boot menu or boot order, no dice I get an error since the boot manager apparently can't be modified as it's locked down on an encrypted drive. Only the business drive will boot up into Windows. Changing the boot order, results in a bitlocker recovery.

The only way I can access the new Win11 instance, is if i again remove the original drive so that only the new drive is installed. This means I have to physically take the drive out of the machine every time I want to boot the other instance.

Is there any other workaround or something I can do so that I don't have to physically swap the drive out everytime I want to boot my drive? This seems ludacris....

The original

Megahertz · Jul 25, 2023

Welcome to the forum.

I also have 2 drives, each with it's own OS.
- It is important that when you install the new and less protected OS, you disconnect the other drive. For what you wrote, that is what you've done.
- As the two OS are independent and in it's own drive you must select a primary boot drive on BIOS and launch the Boot Menu (F9?) when you want to boot the other OS. You must disable Fast Startup on both OS as Fast Startup can interfere on the next boot on the other drive.

Turn On or Off Fast Startup in Windows 10

How to Turn On or Off Fast Startup in Windows 10

www.tenforums.com

SIW2 · Jul 25, 2023

Have you considered buying your own machine?

spapakons · Jul 26, 2023

I guess you try to change the boot priority in BIOS and fails. What if you keep it as it is and you select boot disk with the F9 key? Does this work? If you can install a virtual machine such as VirtualBox or VMWare Player, I would install Windows 11 on the virtual machine and do there what I want. Unless you play games the performance difference should no matter. You can even configure the virtual machine to use the second physical disk (virtualize) instead of a virtual disk from the advanced settings. If you cannot install any applications, you last resort is to use a portable version of the VirtualBox or VMWare Player than don't need installation.

NavyLCDR · Jul 26, 2023

Ask your employer to unlock the computer so you can tinker with it and see how far you get. Make sure to let them know you are going to try to hack the computer anyway and you are asking computer forums for advice on how to do it. I'm sure you will get a promotion.

spapakons · Jul 27, 2023

Back in the late 90's I was running Windows 95 and was blissfully unaware of any restrictions as I had full access to my computer. In University we had Windows NT 4.0 and the Administrator had locked it so much that we were not even allowed to load Notepad to take notes! When we informed him about it he was trying the whole day to unlock it as he couldn't remember what to do! Ever since I hate any restrictions! I want full access to the computer whenever possible. The employer won't understand and won't cooperate. Don't bother asking him, you may lose your job! Just use a virtual machine as suggested. I'm sure you can find a portable version of VirtualBox that doesn't need installation, in case you have no rights to install any software.

StartedAt95 · Oct 20, 2023

Hi, sorry to ride on this post and revive it again. Hope this is allowed and did not breach any rules that I'm unaware of.

I'm facing a similar issue with what OP has, though slightly different.

I'm given permission by my employer to install a personal secondary drive for my own use -- since this is an expensive laptop for a project that has been cancelled, but I want to keep using it while also doing normal day-to-day work on it. And so I have W11 Pro installed on the secondary slot of the drive.

However, it seems like for some reason, every few days the personal drive gets always messed up / corrupted by the main Work Drive (which is a W11 Ent) with bitlocker enabled. Initially, I thought it's due to a faulty repurposed NVME that I sorta use for this. But even with a brand new NVME, it still gives me drive error and 'repairing' mode whenever I try to boot into the Personal Drive. The Work Drive itself is perfectly fine and runs without issue.

The caveat here that should be highlighted is that the main drive for work purpose is soldered to the board, and there's no way of unlocking the bitlocker locked drive on this, alsoi have a horrible IT team (because they are outsourced, and they dgaf) that did not do a proper job at documenting the original pin. And I do not want to lose my saved work on it either.

May I know what are some of the workarounds I can do to fix this issue?

spapakons · Oct 20, 2023

Unless you have some work applications you cannot reinstall, I would carefully backup all my data and then completely wipe the drive. This unlocks the Bitlocker so you can reinstall Windows and applications without any restrictions. Another way is to create a virtual machine on your own drive and do whatever you want in the virtual OS without restrictions.

NavyLCDR · Oct 20, 2023

StartedAt95 said:
Hi, sorry to ride on this post and revive it again. Hope this is allowed and did not breach any rules that I'm unaware of.

I'm facing a similar issue with what OP has, though slightly different.

I'm given permission by my employer to install a personal secondary drive for my own use -- since this is an expensive laptop for a project that has been cancelled, but I want to keep using it while also doing normal day-to-day work on it. And so I have W11 Pro installed on the secondary slot of the drive.

However, it seems like for some reason, every few days the personal drive gets always messed up / corrupted by the main Work Drive (which is a W11 Ent) with bitlocker enabled. Initially, I thought it's due to a faulty repurposed NVME that I sorta use for this. But even with a brand new NVME, it still gives me drive error and 'repairing' mode whenever I try to boot into the Personal Drive. The Work Drive itself is perfectly fine and runs without issue.

The caveat here that should be highlighted is that the main drive for work purpose is soldered to the board, and there's no way of unlocking the bitlocker locked drive on this, alsoi have a horrible IT team (because they are outsourced, and they dgaf) that did not do a proper job at documenting the original pin. And I do not want to lose my saved work on it either.

May I know what are some of the workarounds I can do to fix this issue?

The problem is most likely Windows Fast Startup. This should be turned off on both Windows installations. And I am not talking about fast boot settings in BIOS. It is a Windows setting.

Turn On or Off Fast Startup in Windows 11

This tutorial will show you how to turn on or off fast startup in Windows 11. There are three startup modes in Windows: Cold (traditional) Wake-from-hibernation Fast Starting with Windows 8.x, the default shutdown and restart scenario has been updated and named fast startup. Fast startup...

www.elevenforum.com

StartedAt95 · Oct 21, 2023

NavyLCDR said:
The problem is most likely Windows Fast Startup. This should be turned off on both Windows installations. And I am not talking about fast boot settings in BIOS. It is a Windows setting.

Turn On or Off Fast Startup in Windows 11

This tutorial will show you how to turn on or off fast startup in Windows 11. There are three startup modes in Windows: Cold (traditional) Wake-from-hibernation Fast Starting with Windows 8.x, the default shutdown and restart scenario has been updated and named fast startup. Fast startup...

www.elevenforum.com

I've tried doing this, and I hope it solves the problem. The issue is that I don't see the Fast Boot option in the power setting. So I tried using the command prompt line instead.

Is the process of putting the

Code:

powercfg /h off

line into CMD instead. But I have not noticed any difference so far.

Do you reckon that putting the Personal Drive offline on the Work Windows instance would help? Because I have tried doing it on the Personal Windows, but not the Work one.

Thank you!

NavyLCDR · Oct 21, 2023

Making the opposite disk offline may help.

Trouble with dual Windows 11 boot

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