Hello all. I am planning to upgrade Windows 10 Pro to Windows 11 and have several installation questions.
Asus H470M
Intel 10th Gen I9
32G Memory
AMD FirePro W5100 Graphics w/ 3 monitors
Focusrite Scarlett Solo Audio
I have several drives in my system, one for OS and related stuff, one for Graphics apps (AutoDesk, Adobe), one for Music Production (Cakewalk DAW and plugins), one for OneDrive, and a couple more for various types of data storage. I have upgraded my UEFI, and enabled both TPM and Secure Boot.
First question: Windows PC Health says I do not have Secure Boot enabled. I found somewhere that
Win 11 should be installed on a GPT formatted drive, not NTFS, which my C: drive is now. Is this correct, would it cause PC Health to be inaccurate? Can I install Win11 anyway? What is the best format for Win 11? I plan to install on a brand new clean SSD. Any tips on what to look out for?
Second Question: Is bootable USB the best method to install? If I want to retain Win10 and Win11 and enable dual boot (in case of problems... problems?), if they are installed on separate physical drives is there any other requirements other than telling UEFI where to start? Is there a DualBoot module that has to be installed or activated?
Third question: Will it be possible to migrate any of my installed apps to the new OS, or will they all have to be reinstalled? Can Windows or any third party app (like EaseUS) search the registry and migrate settings?
Fourth question: I have some apps that use their own installer and insist on being on the C: drive. (I have tried manually searching the registry to change this but it has failed to work.) If I wanted to install the OS to another physical drive than one named C:, will that cause problems?
Fifth question: Regardless of where the OS is located, how can I tell it where specific files (user files, desktop, downloads, etc.) are located?
Sixth question: Am I crazy for trying to do this? It took me several years, on and off, and a lot of trial and error to get Windows working like this, but it has been stable for several more years now. Biggest problem in the beginning was having two copies of the same operating system installed. Even though MS said it could be done, and they were on separate drives, the registries eventually got hopelessly entangled causing a complete crash and requiring reformatting to repair. (This was before VM's, or at least my knowledge of them.)
Thanks for any help or suggestions.
