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I have Debian 10 and Windows 10 1903 set up as dual boot on a Thinkpad T440p using UEFI. Until now I was also able to start that same Windows 10 instance as a virtual machine using virt-manager/libvirt/QEMU on Debian. I got that to work using these instructions: https://superuser.com/a/1171859

Unfortunately, with a recent Windows 10 update (I'm not sure which one exactly, must have been in the past 3 months), this no longer works. Both methods (dual boot and virtualization) can always boot successfully using safe mode, but only the method that was most recently booted in safe mode will successfully boot normally, whereas using the other method will result in Windows showing INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE.

What I already tried:

  • Delete the VM settings and set it up again from scratch
  • Removing unnecessary devices from the VM
  • Setting the virtual CD drive serial number to the host CD drive serial number
  • Setting the virtual Ethernet adapter MAC address to the host Ethernet adapter MAC address

Of course, it will likely work again, if I downgrade Windows, but I need the up-to-date version. Any ideas how to fix it or debug it further?

1 Answers1

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I found a workaround: When using a different system-uuid for the VM, Windows boots and shows during the boot process that it is setting up new devices. From then on dual boot and virtualization both work, but of course when booted through virtualization Windows considers itself to no longer be activated, as the system-uuid changed. For me that's a good enough work around as I frequently dual boot, which resets the grace period for activation.