Windows installed 2 updates on first boot. It seems to update normally, just that it can’t reboot to windows without sending the uefi from the computer, so it take some manual rebooting.
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Out of curiosity, can you install any x86 .exe download from the internet? Does the emulation work?
Good question! Give me something small to try. I don’t stray out of office or edge much normally.
Maybe try Krita or Fire Aplaca? They are not exactly small though.
I’m curious how the UI work on art program works on those. Would be cool to setup drawing canvas on one screen and all panels/setting/reference windows on another. But that would probably be more useful on a Neo-sized device.
Amazing how the need for Neo keeps re-Surfacing…but my fear is that the YogaBook 9i pretty much means MS has truly abandoned the concept since Lenovo ripped off so much of the design, just bigger…
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Well, the Surface like was partly supposed to inspire and prod OEMs.
And it only sort of worked, but ended up being successful in and of itself…
My prediction is that Lenovo will get bored and move on to something else, maybe keeping the form factor around somewhere. Not that them experimenting with form factors is unwanted.
It’s currently downloading the 2023-01 Cumulative Update (very slowly) while I try to figure out what to install on it. I have 21 GB free after installing office.
Is it safe to do windows update on an unsupported device? It would be very troublesome if touch or pen driver become broken. Also the fact that it can’t be charged in Windows during update. Is the battery life good?
Supposedly the charging issue was fixed last month: Windows 11 on Surface Duo now supports charging, pedometer, light sensor, and more | Windows Central
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Well, it could be considered ‘unsafe’ if you regard losing your Windows install unsafe. But that’s always been the risk with projects like that and you shouldn’t go into them if you’re not prepared to do a complete wipe if need be.
But in terms of bricking device? Not really. It could happen, sure, but you could throw your device out the window, run it over, spill coffee on it too. Especially with Android still there, there should be easy access to the memory to do anything necessary if Windows borks, or you could just use a terminal.
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Well, yeah, but after successfully getting windows to run, I think it would be better to deter update and try using the exact Windows version provided by the guide.
I have my own history of putting 3rd party rom into unsupported devices, hacking old hardware following guide, Android and Windows alike. Most of the time it would end with me having a bricked device if I update Windows or using a slightly different version of Android ROM. They are no major loss as they are really cheap, outdated devices that I would throw out otherwise.
But the Duo is still quite modern and have value, after successfully get Windows to run on it, I would err on the side of caution unless the project creator give an ok to update. But yeah, since Android still work, it’s probably easy to wipe the whole thing and install it back if trouble happens.
Yes, I had seen that, which is part of what pushed me over the edge to wanting to try it for myself. I loaded the latest driver set available in the guide. There was some more recent chatter in telegram about it being supported “soon” so maybe that support was in a beta release? Or had to be withdrawn? I haven’t had a chance to look into it more yet.
The update installed fine. I don’t mind breaking things based on the way this dual boot is set up. The phone itself can only boot Android, and Windows has no way of touching any Androidy bits of the drive. Worst case would be a windows reinstall.
I haven’t run it in windows long enough to get an idea of battery life. I did get the steam client installed and it runs fine. Unfortunately, the few games I have are too big for the remaining SSD. I may try Civ V as that one is a bit smaller, but I’ve run into problems with older games not knowing what to do with the graphics on ARM.
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They just uploaded an updated set of drivers to address a few things related to stuff about stuff. My main takeaway is that I no longer have evaluation copy watermarks on the desktop, so the update must have worked.
There’s a separate guide for just updating drivers: SurfaceDuo-Guides/UpdateDriversAndUEFI.md at main · WOA-Project/SurfaceDuo-Guides · GitHub
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I went back in Telegram and saw that charging was disabled on Jan 23rd because of bugchecks that apparently made the os unusable.
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Thanks! I’m enjoying the journey. It’s fun to share my adventures. Thanks for reading!
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It’s like “I’m sure glad it’s you, not me!”
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Well, as they say “if it ain’t broke, you haven’t tweaked it hard enough yet”
I decided to repartition to give more space to windows and rebuild a new image that hopefully has the store and everything. I broke various things a few times, mostly due to being lazy about the efi partition, but I’m back to a working windows install and I’m going through the first run set up now. Here’s hoping I have a store and room to install stuff. Otherwise, I’m just going to have to get a 256GB Duo1.
ETA: It worked! I now have the store and 45GB free space. And a random D: drive because…? I’m going to attempt some truly ridiculous stuff tomorrow.
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OK that’s hilarious 
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