How to install 2nd instance of Windows 10

If you have a sufficiently new version of the Intel RST driver, specifically the F6 version that comes in a zip file (F6 is a reference to the Windows XP Setup days), then you should be able to load that driver at the point in the wizard where you select where to install Windows by clicking Load Driver. It can take quite a while to load last time I tried, though. Make sure you get it straight from Intel. If you’re having trouble, what exactly is happening there? There has to be a way to do that, otherwise it wouldn’t be possible to load Windows onto the system in its current state, and obviously Dell managed to.

The other option would be jumping through some hoops to switch from RAID to AHCI on a live system. Apparently this is possible through some routine involving things like Safe Mode and some fussing around before and/or after the change, but I haven’t looked into that.

However, be aware that you might find that one or both of your Windows 10 installations won’t remain activated. I’m not sure if a PC’s Windows 10 license allows multiple instances of the OS to exist simultaneously on the same system. But if your work instance has a license provided via a KMS lease or an MAK key rather than trying to reuse the license that came with your system, you’ll be fine

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@jphughan wrote:

If you have a sufficiently new version of the Intel RST driver, specifically the F6 version that comes in a zip file (F6 is a reference to the Windows XP Setup days), then you should be able to load that driver at the point in the wizard where you select where to install Windows by clicking Load Driver. It can take quite a while to load last time I tried, though. Make sure you get it straight from Intel. If you’re having trouble, what exactly is happening there? There has to be a way to do that, otherwise it wouldn’t be possible to load Windows onto the system in its current state, and obviously Dell managed to.

The other option would be jumping through some hoops to switch from RAID to AHCI on a live system. Apparently this is possible through some routine involving things like Safe Mode and some fussing around before and/or after the change, but I haven’t looked into that.

However, be aware that you might find that one or both of your Windows 10 installations won’t remain activated. I’m not sure if a PC’s Windows 10 license allows multiple instances of the OS to exist simultaneously on the same system. But if your work instance has a license provided via a KMS lease or an MAK key rather than trying to reuse the license that came with your system, you’ll be fine

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My troubles with the RST/F6 drivers are here: https://www.dell.com/community/Windows-10/XPS-15-9570-Windows-10-installation-complains-about-missing/td-p/7289019

Switching van RAID to AHCI on the existing install seems doable according to blog posts describing the process.

Interesting.... I haven’t used a 9570 myself, and the only time I’ve seen the generic “Missing drivers” prompt was when i injected NVMe hotfixes directly into the Windows 7 boot.wim file to have as a convenience and then tried to use that ISO on a VM. For some reason those NVMe hotfixes broke that simple use case. And I agree the lack of detail around what drivers you need is hugely annoying. Unfortunately from reading your other thread, it sounds like you’ve already tried everything I would normally try (short of injecting drivers directly into the WIM, but that shouldn’t be necessary for this purpose and it’s kind of a pain), and you obviously aren’t new to the Windows install process, so without access to a 9570 myself, I doubt I’d be able to figure out what’s different about your setup. Just to confirm, you’re booting from a garden variety USB flash drive directly connected to the system with no other extraneous peripherals attached, correct? You’re not trying to use a dock or some exotic device like a Thunderbolt SSD or something?

Manually switching from RAID to AHCI can definitely be done since I’ve seen people report success doing it. I just don’t know the exact steps since I’ve never had a reason to do it myself. Although again from reading your thread, it’s strange that you had to try loading a driver even while the system was in AHCI mode. Windows 8 and above have native NVMe support, so drivers shouldn’t be necessary when installing those OSes when the system is in AHCI. The AHCI version of the driver exists because way back when, AHCI was a new mode for SATA, and older versions of Windows didn’t support it, so you either needed this driver or you needed to run your SATA ports in Legacy mode to emulate IDE ports.