Page 969 - Windows 10 May 2019 Update The Missing Manual: The Book That Should Have Been in the Box

Buy a second hard drive. Use it for one of the two operating systems.

Back up your hard drive, erase it completely, and then partition it,

which means dividing it so each chunk shows up with its own icon,
name, and drive letter. Then install each operating system on a separate
disk partition, using the “clean install” instructions in this appendix.

If you’re less technically inclined, you might prefer to buy a program
like Acronis Disk Director. Not only does it let you create a new
partition on your hard drive without erasing it first, but it’s also flexible

and easy.

There’s just one wrinkle with dual booting: If you install Windows 10
onto a separate partition (or a different drive), as you must, you won’t

find any of your existing programs listed in the Start menu, and your
desktop won’t be configured the way it is in your original operating
system. You’ll generally wind up having to reinstall every program into

your new Windows world, and to reestablish all your settings, exactly
as though the Windows 10 “side” were a brand-new PC.

Suddenly, the screen looks colorful and the typography modern. You’ve
entered the Setup Assistant, described next.

The Windows 10 Setup Assistant

If you’ve just bought a brand-new PC, you don’t have to install Windows

10; it’s already installed and activated. But you don’t go straight to the
desktop when you turn it on. Instead, you have to punch through a slew of
setup screens (Figure A-2)—made more pleasant by Cortana, whose voice

walks you through them (and even lets you confirm each screen by saying
“Yes”).