Installing Technical Preview of Windows 10 on Surface Pro 3

Last week Microsoft released the Technical Preview of Windows 10, but lets make one one clear:

Technical Preview is not a Operating System (OS) meant to be used. It is only for Microsoft to get a greater feedback then they could ever get inside their own Corporation, create the buzz around next release of Windows and let Third party producers start developing firmware and software to be ready for Release To Manufacture (RTM).

Keylogger, well, yes there is implemented a sort of keylogger in the Technical Preview of Windows 10, but it’s not like it will be builtin with RTM. The Technical Preview is not ment to be used for everyday, only development and this keylogger among other services are part of the developing of Windows 10.

So, keep Your Windows 8, 7, Vista or XP and only use Windows 10 for fun inside a Virtual Machine or if you realy like to, dual boot.

Windows 10 Technical Preview on Surface Pro 3 in dual boot, with default booting Windows 8.1 🙂

Challenge Number 1

First I tried my friend Per-Torben Sørensen blog post about dual booting to a VHD file, but I did something wrong and fucked up my boot manager.

To fix this, I used a second computer to make a bootable USB Device With Windows 10 Technical Preview. Changed the boot order and could choose Windows 8.1 again.

For References, booting a Surface Pro from USB Device: Shut Down Your Surface Pro. Hold Down the button for lowering sound while turning Your Surface Pro on, then release the Sound Button when you see the Surface Logo.

Challenge Number 2

So I thought this might not work for Surface Pro 3, and turned to older installation options.

1. Lets try boot from USB and see how we can install it from here, but this wasn’t as easy anymore.
2. Tried resizing inside Windows 10 Setup, but the partiton was encrypted With BitLocker.
3. Turned the encryption off and decrypted all the files.
4. Restartet installation from my USB Device, but using the same partiton would make the older Windows 8.1 copied to a Windows.Old folder and never to work again.

Which I couldn’t live With for now, as this Surface Pro 3 is my every day tool at work.

5. Tried using Disk Manager in Windows 8.1, but couldn’t resize the c-drive and kept getting the error Message: There is not enough free disk Space to Complete this operation.

So after googling around, I turned off Recovery, created a Recovery USB and had the Recovery partiton deleted upon finished the Recovery USB. This was a 5gb partiton, so not a usefull partiton, but it automaticly added the 5gb to my c-drive.

6. I also tried resizing the amount of diskspace offline and temp folder could use to around 10gb, but still the same error.

Now what?

At this point I gave up a little bit, but figured I could try the mounted VHD file one more time and to my surprise it acctually worked 🙂

Source: http://pertorben.wordpress.com/2014/09/16/preparing-for-windows-9-with-dualboot/

I suspect it was because of my BitLocker encryptet harddrive that it didn’t work the first time, and I’ll be back later for a little review of my first eyes on Windows 10 on Surface Pro 3.