I’ve been meaning to switch to Linux, it at least dual boot for a couple years now but have a dumb roadblock that has gotten in the way.
I rebuilt my desktop a few years ago, adding a fast new SSD as well as pretty much all new guts (mb, processor, graphics) carrying over an ancient HDD that was home to my win 10 installation and a tiny 60gb ssd.
When I rebuilt, I figured I would migrate Windows from the old HDD to the shiny new SSD, but was never successful in doing that.
My next step was to install another copy of win10 onto the new SSD, thinking I could just drag and drop my various program folders from the old install into the new. Dumb, I know.
Long story short, I’m still booting off of the old HDD and have two copys of Windows that I have to choose from when booting (the one on the new SSD is empty and doesn’t see any of my old programs).
I’ve been avoiding it, but do I have to do a complete wipe at this point were I to attempt a dual Windows/Linux boot? I’d really rather not have to reinstall all of my junk on a fresh build.
I’ve run Linux before, so I’m not a complete noob, but it’s been a few years. I’d switch over completely if I wasn’t dependent on the Adobe CS (another problem I plan to fix in time, I know there are alternatives).
Sorry if this isn’t the right place to post this, but I was hoping a veteran in this community that may have solved a similar situation.
Oh, I’ve done messes like this… I had a machine whose UEFI had like five things on it. This doesn’t solve it all, but I really like refind for taking care of whacky multi boot scenarios. Just install it and it scans all the drives in a system for OSes and gives you a menu on startup.
There are various VM solutions out there to handle running one-off windows programs, by the way. I have a copy of Win11 inside a Proxmox VM that runs those few times I need desktop Office for something specific. I’m sure others will come in with better solutions, but those are the ones I’ve used.