Go virtual instead
We’re at the point in the PC’s evolution where the overheads of virtualisation are proportionately so small, and the technology enabling it so plentiful, that running an everyday OS in a virtual machine is entirely reasonable. You obviously won’t get 100 percent of bare metal performance from a virtualised instance of Windows 10, but it has a host of advantages. When you’ve got a system running just as you like it, you can take a snapshot, then quickly return to it at any point in the future. You can whip up a fresh copy of Windows in minutes, without any risk to your existing install. You can fire up other operating systems, and run them simultaneously on the same machine. If you’re the kind of person who loves to settle down to a good Windows reinstall in the evening, then you’re probably the right candidate for running a virtualised system.
We could fill an entire issue of this magazine with ways to do it, but if you’re willing to experiment, here’s a broad framework that’s a good place to start. Use Fedora Workstation as your host OS (https://getfedora.org/en/workstation) and use the included Boxes app (a front end for KVM/QEMU) to get your VMs up and running. Install VirtIO to ensure that all of the IO functions work properly, and SPICE to deal with 3D acceleration. And make sure you’ve accessed your BIOS/UEFI settings and enabled all the good stuff that makes VMs work well – specifically Intel-VT or AMD-V, depending on your platform.
If you fancy a challenge, both VMWare ESXi and Microsoft Hyper-V Server are pro-grade bare-metal hypervisors, which put a minimal layer between your guest OS and the hardware they’re working with, but they do require some pro-grade understanding to get the most out of them, so are beyond the scope of this feature.