On Sun, 27 Nov 2022 at 15:51, Mayuresh <mayur...@acm.org> wrote: > I have ordered a new laptop and hoping to run NetBSD as primary OS on it > if things go fine. (See my other post on chipset, graphics processor etc.) > > This laptop comes with pre-installed Windows. I do not need and do not use > Windows. But since I am being given one, can I just keep the option to use > it open e.g. as a qemu guest on NetBSD (or Linux for that matter). Is > there something I need to do before I wipe out the pre-installed Windows?
There is a chance that you might. I used to have an HP laptop- it sadly died a few months ago- which had initially some version of Windows- I believe, 7, at the time, then upgraded to 10- used for a while, including perhaps when I was logged with my Microsoft account. The last years of its life this laptop spent as my netbsd-current development server, Aldo running some nvmm guests. One of those was a windows 10 vm, installed from scratch. At one time I was surprised to discover that it was automatically registered and the license was valid, apparently inherited from the physical host, after all the MAC address received by Microsoft was the same, as well as the cpu type. So if you make sure you go through the windows setup and link it’s license to a Microsoft account, after you install netbsd and configure a nvmm windows instance, it should be licensed. I still would suggest installing a windows backup program like macrium reflect and storing an image backup of the original system though. Chavdar > > -- > Mayuresh > -- ----
