Well my school just destroyed all my dreams of installing archlinux on my laptop. I don’t have admin access to my own laptop.(Technically my parents bought it but they too don’t have access)And the school has access to all files on my(maybe parents) laptop. So now my idea is to clone my ssd into a USB drive, install arch, make a VM, clone the USB drive to the vm’s virtual drive. My question is, will that work? If I install all the virtual machine drivers before cloning my ssd will it work and how do I prevent the DMA from knowing I’m using a VM?
Edit: I have full access to bios.The school made us install windows 11 pro education and sign in with our school accounts and the admins are the school domain admin accounts. The controlling stuff is kinda justifiable and the reason their doing it is to limit the screen time. And its legal since my parents accepted it. So is there any way to install virtio drivers withought admin access before cloning the ssd?
If you have bought the laptop why don’t you have all the access to it ?
Yes, it should work.
For the cloning you can use clonezilla.
Then, you can install arch. Remove all the partitions and start fresh with a clean arch system in the process.
As long as nobody ever told you that you are not allowed to re-install the OS, they can’t blame you.
Even more so, as you can show that you have done everything to keep the original OS working as well (in a VM). Add that to the fact that you purchased this laptop → it’s yours.
The school’s IT people/teachers should be very proud of you for the knowledge you are showing by achieving this. This deserves an A+.
Dude just reinstall, you don’t want them having access to your laptop. Install arch as host, tell the school your laptop broke and your getting it fixed, then create a windows VM for your school work and only sign in to your school network in the VM.
I have some doubts.
You don’t detailed it but I supposed the default OS is Windows 10/11? If you have secure boot + tpm encryption, I’m almost sure you won’t be able to get a boot state or a volume unencrypted (I’m a bit rusty with Windows but I think v11 needs them).
And you don’t need specific drivers for the first test boot, only when optimizing the VM. But how can you install drivers if you aren’t admin ?
The cloning to test it should work, only if you can boot from external usb. If they really made some security stuff, you can’t access your uefi without admin password and usb boot is disabled. If they made it seriously of course ^^.
On the legal stuff, depending of your country, this crap can be authorized. But not cool…
The fun part is that that school now owns your computer as far as Windows is concerned. Now that it’s been registered with the school account, if you ever install Windows fresh on it again, it’ll probably force you to do so again, because it will recognize your stored windows reg and hardware fingerprint as belonging to the school. Yay windows!
No it’s not alright. You got the laptop, school has no businesses on it.
Reinstall win 11 or Linux or whatever, but you should have admin rights. Keeping tabs on screen time should not be done via cyber parenting.
You can install the OS on a flash drive and boot it off that. Clean and simple.
what’s stopping you from booting into a USB, backing up osk.exe and copying cmd.exe to it, booting back and giving your account admin using netplwiz or something? or does it have bitlocker? you could try something like this but it depends on the hardware. or if it has a firmware password, you can short a pin or remove the CMOS battery
another method would be to ask the IT team or your parents, since you own the device which means you should have access to it, but I don’t know if that’d work
To be honest, there sounds like lots of missing info here that has nothing to do with the technical details of installing arch.
Your parents “bought” it, but the school has administrative control over it? Are you sure they didn’t lease it from the school? Are you sure it’s “yours”?
The correct advice here is to do what your parents and school administrators are telling you to do and leave the machine alone.
Many adults have work laptops that they take home, use, etc. but these are not theirs and, like you, they do not have administrative control over these machines. I suspect you’re in a similar environment.
Dual booting would be easier and less risky, but of course less convenient and less satisfying.
A compromise might be to get dual booting to work, then convert that to a VM setup using the same physical disk partition for MS (instead of a virtual drive). You wouldn’t have to clone the partition, just shrink it.
- Copy your files to a USB drive
- Completely format your laptop and install Arch
- You’re an adult and your university has absolutely no business controlling the device that you own.
Here are my thoughts: leave the school-controlled computer intact and run Arch Linux on an altogether different machine (desktop or laptop).
Even a (broke?) teenager can work some odd jobs (e.g., mowing lawns) and make enough money to buy a refurbished off-lease PC. If the OP is in the US, they could order a nice Dell OptiPlex for ~$110 USD (with free delivery) when they go on sale, which is quite often.
Hell, I bet a bunch of us on this subreddit have spare PCs we can send the OP (with parental permission of course) so they can tinker to their heart’s content. I own a consulting firm and have an old HP laptop I was considering retiring that’d do the trick.
The school shouldn’t have done that…
Depends. You may be (probably are) contractually obligated to allow them to do this as a condition of, e.g. accessing their network.
The better option, if possible, might be running arch in a vm.
On a related note: choose your battles. Do you want to dump a lot of effort into working around their system? This effort might be better expended on studying your curriculum.
If you can proceed to BIOS then your dream still can come true. No need to give a fxxk to administrator privileges on Windows
Just wipe your computer and install Arch, then use a cloud instance of Windows for school and just say you don’t own a computer.
Regardless of whether it is technically possible and whether you are able to do it, you should think about what happens if you write a class assignment on your computer and the school finds out that changes have been made to the operating system on this computer. Imagine something like Anticheat for your final paper. You could be framed for it. Maybe you want to rule that out from the outset?
Why not go the adult way and tell your school you use another OS asking them to install theirs on a VM for you? Not sure what is their policy, but can’t be as bad as “no, you must give us full control over this very private device YOU own”. If this is the case, then by all means, hack the shit out of this OS and put it in a VM.
Maybe you’re missing the point. Your parents could have bought the laptop based on some kind of contract that the school had with them. It can’t be otherwise, you can’t do such things without a contract. What that contract says, you don’t know. Obviously, the school installed Windows on your laptop based on some kind of commitment that your parents signed. Breaking those commitments will probably result in fines that your parents will have to pay. Let me give you some advice. Give up trying to “hack” the school laptop. Buy an old Thinkpad at a garage sale and start realizing your dream. Because I’ve seen tons of posts on Reddit where school sysadmins have blocked Linux devices from accessing the network. Surely all the programs for school are designed for Windows.