Here is something geeky and not for the fainthearted. If you’re like me, you’ve not listened to Microsoft with the advise not to install Windows 10 Technical Preview on your production Machine. You believe every tech problem is there to be resolved.

So you installed Win10TP on your production desktop/laptop and you forgot you’ve enabled an unsupported feature called DeDuplication on your Client machine because you have a lot of Hyper-V VHDx files consuming your precious SSD drive. Now with Win10TP install you can’t access any of your DeDup volumes anymore. It is a dance you have to do with each OS install to activate DeDup on your client since new OS install breaks the former DeDup objects.

Fear not, the alpha-geeks on the Net are already on the case. I wanted to download the Windows Server Technical Preview to extract the DeDup objects since they can only be found there. But decided to do a search online if someone has already done it. Why re-invent the wheel. And lo and behold, someone actually has gone before me. I tip my hat to him/her at: http://365lab.net/2014/10/05/unsupported-hero-enable-deduplication-in-windows-10-technical-preview/

He not only has extracted the DeDup bits for us into a zipped file, he has also provided the PowerShell script to Re-Enable if you’ve done it before, or to install if you’re activating DeDup for the first time.

Download the bits from his OneDrive share and run the PowerShell script found in the included “Install.txt.txt” file. Make sure CD to the folder where you packed out the zipped bits in PowerShell console before running the commands.

After running the commands, your old DeDuped volumes are available again and all maintenance schedules are reactivated. You can check with Get-DedupVolume and Get-DedupStatus commands as above.

Don’t forget to drop him a word of thanks for his effort, and if you have any question, post in the comments below.

[Update:]If you love DeDup on your WinOS Client, please join us in the clamor to get Microsoft to support DeDup on Windows Client so that we don’t have to do this DeDup dance each time we upgrade our client OS.