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I need to boot the same windows installation from my pc and laptop as well, where I will find all of my installed applications and settings and whatnot.

I have done this in the past and it has worked when moving from old pc to new one, but I don't know if this is reliable or if I am even supposed to do this every two weeks.

So far I have only worked from my desktop where I feel most comfortable working than laptops. But I need to travel more on the upcoming months and I'll be carrying a laptop. It's going to be such a pain constantly trying to sync applications and setting between every time I need to head out and come back and switch between my pc and laptop.

What should be solution here instead of syncing back and forth? Will the hard drive swapping reliable? Should I instead setup a vm? Anyone used it so far or daily use? In my experience it seems a bit laggy.

I want to continue working on my desktop when I'm home and only use laptop on the go. I also don't mind buying additional windows licenses if I need to.

DistortedBit
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  • @Ramhound. You marked this question as duplicate, which indicates that the other question has an answer, but that answer would not work for this OP, as it indicates that Windows boots from the USB device (using that device in replacement of a missing HDD), and as such, would require identical hardware for both his desktop and laptop. In this OP's situation, it would be impossible to boot that same USB device on both his machines due to the obvious differences in the HAL. Only by running a VM on both can he do what he wants. As such, I request you remove the duplicate mark. Thank you. – SiBrit Aug 11 '19 at 05:06

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One option is to use the Hyper-V P2V tool to make a VM of your desktop PC, put the VHD onto a portable drive, then run it as a VM from both your desktop and your laptop.

Doesn't have to be Hyper-V. Any hypervisor would do. There may also be a licensing issue, which you seem to be aware of.

There are several ways to get the VM to boot from USB. Here are 3 for Hyper-V, VMWare and VirtualBox:

https://www.petri.com/boot-hyper-v-virtual-machine-usb-drive/

https://www.maketecheasier.com/boot-from-usb-drive-vmware/

https://www.howtogeek.com/187721/how-to-boot-from-a-usb-drive-in-virtualbox/

SiBrit
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