Setting up new (to me) machine for dual boot with W10

English Hardware
#1

Just acquired an HP Z640 and am now snooping around inside to find what I have and what I need.

It seems I only have a Samsung SSD 860 PRO 256 GB drive and 16 GB of memory. It has a working W10 system installed which I need to keep.

For writing this I have Leap 15.3 Live running from USB stick to check out the system but do I have enough capacity to shrink the W10 partition to accommodate Leap 15.3 installation and what happens with the existing UEFI when I try and set up dual boot?

#2

Hi
Windows 10 activation is locked to the machine, re-install (free download from MS) and it will activate…

#3

Hi Malcolm, I had to use Leap live system to unlock and now waiting for updates. So far so good but I put a spare 2TB disk in the one remaining slot. Sadly I cannot see it on either the original widoze system or from my Live Leap 15.3. Is there something I must turn on to activate the new drive?

#4

Hi
Check in the BIOS that the sSATA port is enabled… they can all be turned off and on etc :wink:

#5

It also helps if the drives are SATA not SAS!!!

#6

Hi
Both are supported… Page 106 of the Service guide… Same board as I have in the HP Z440…

#7

Yes but SAS needs an additional card AFIK. At least the SAS drives were not seen. Not tried the SATA drives yet.

#8

Hi
Interesting, never used them :wink:

I did setup dual boot last evening on my Z440… unplugged the NVME and SATA dive and popped in an additional older SSD to install windows on, all works fine, just selected F9 for boot menu when I had re-connected my openSUSE NVME and SSD to boot into Tumbleweed, set the efi boot order. I don’t have grub showing, default is direct to Tumbleweed, if need to boot into Windows I can use F9 or boot next efibootmgr option.

#9

Hi Malcolm,
Once I get my IBM machine working as required I shall swap it out with my original machine which at present is on TW, so I can clean it and upgrade the hardware. When I was trying to sort out the NVMe etc you suggested I stay with Leap 15.3 rather than TW. Having worked with Leap 15.3 I quite like it and certainly like the many fewer updates and reboots. Is it a big deal to downgrade from TW to 15.3? Do I run the “upgrade” option on the CD or do a fresh install?

#10

Hi
I would work out the hardware kinks, I would suggest a fresh install of Leap 15.3 :wink: