Windows 10 licence install questions

Moleyman · 15 Apr 2019 at 18:58

Hi,

I have a question regarding Windows 10 installs but I am truggling to find the best way to word the issues, so I hope that I have made myself clear – if not, please accept my apologies.

My basic question is… do I actually NEED to have 2 different Windows 10 licences to have 2 different installs on the same PC – 1 for general work and 1 for gaming? I am not referring to the legalities but the actual technical limitations?

The reason I ask is this…

A few years ago I bought a 4770K prebuilt system that came with a Windows 7 Pro 64bit licence. This machine eventually upgraded to Windows 10 Pro. I had 2 separate install of Windows 10 Pro on this machine – one for general work (500GB SATA SSD) and one for gaming (1TB SATA SSD) and this worked great for my purposes. I could install and reinstall on the 2 different SSDs as and when I needed to – everything was wonderful J

Now, I will do my best to explain exactly what happens.

Fast-forward to today and I have recently purchased a new 9900K prebuilt system with 2 x 1TB NVMe SSDs (1 x 970 EVO and 1 x 970 EVO Plus). This DID NOT come with an OS as I had several Windows 7 Pro OEM licences spare and I took a chance that one of these would work with a Windows 10 Pro installer and it does – yay me!

However, if I install Windows 10 on to both of these SSDs only the first install will actually boot the system - the second install won’t boot.

BUT, If I only have one SSD in the machine and install Windows 10 and then physically remove the first SSD and put in the second SSD and install on to the second SSD - then put the first SSD back in to the system as well as the second then both SSDs will be bootable.

This is a problem because if I want to reinstall Windows 10 on one of the SSDs then I have to take the other one out of the system – and this is a PITA because one of the SSDs is mounted under the GPU so that has to come out as well.

Does anyone know why this is the case? Is it because I currently only have one licence “attached” to this machine – bearing in mind my 4770K build that only has one licence and works fine?

As I have another spare Windows 7 Pro OEM licence I could also use that if possible on the second SSD but will that cause any problems having 2 licences attached to the 9900K build? If I need to reinstall one of the Windows setups how will I know which licence number it needs? It would be worth it so that I don’t have to remove drives when I want to clean install Windows 10

Any help and advice you could offer would be very gratefully received.

Many thanks in advance,

Moley

JJimmyJ · 16 Apr 2019 at 12:41

Hello,

This sounds like a boot loader nightmare? Did you do a fresh install with both ssd drives attached or one at a time?
I've seen windows booting no problems for months with 2 operating systems, then all of a sudden, bam!
I'm regards to the licence, honestly no idea. It's all the same hardware, but it is different physical disks, so would assume 2 keys needed. However, you can run windows without a key and most of the features work. If it's just games on one system, then a key probably isn't needed

Moleyman · 16 Apr 2019 at 13:56

Hi and thanks for your reply.

Basically I have to put SSD "A" in the machine and install Windows 10 on to it and then I have to take SSD "A" out of the PC.

I then have to put SSD "B" in the machine and install Windows 10 on to it.

I can then put SSD "A" back in the PC as well as SSD "B" and I can then dual boot by pressing F12 during startup and select which drive I want to boot from and this works great.

My problem is that if I wish to reinstall Windows on say SSD "B", I have to remove SSD "A" from the PC first (otherwise it won't install properly on SSD "B" - it installs but won't boot afterwards; it's like it knows there is already a bootable SSD "A" in the PC using the licence) - and vice versa. This is an issue as one of the SSDs socket is underneath my GPU so I have to remove the GPU first to get the SSD out etc etc.

So I was wondering if I had two different Windows licences - one for each SSD - if this would allow me to reinstall Windows properly without having to remove the "other" SSD first.

I hope that this is clearer.

Thanks again,

Moley

Feek · 16 Apr 2019 at 19:35

This doesn't seem like a licence issue to me.

ShotInTheAss86 · 18 Apr 2019 at 15:45

Agree with Feek, W10 auto licenses install based on hardware once its been registered (1st install) and as hardware is same for both installs Microsoft wouldn't notice in theory

I've seen windows do funny things with multiple drives connected when doing install and it using a 2nd drive to the OS drive to load boot files if you've already got an active OS drive connected. This may have been the cause when you did your 2nd install of W10 perhaps

Moleyman · 21 Apr 2019 at 20:21

Hi everyone,

Thanks for the replies.

I guess I'll just have to keep plugging and unplugging drives when I want to reinstall. It sucks, but hey-ho.

Thanks again,

Moley

Ben Cole · 21 Apr 2019 at 21:03

Can you disable the channels that the drives are on in the BIOS/UEFI settings instead of physically removing them?

Moleyman · 21 Apr 2019 at 21:12

Hi,

I was hoping that but I cannot find a setting to disable the NVMe M.2 slots, only the Sata III ports