@thevhswizard Have you access to the BIOS settings ?That was one of my important requirements to boot Linux Mint from an external disk (via USB). I just changed the boot order: USB first, then internal disk.Without external disk the system behaved like intended, so no obvious sign of running Linux mostly.From time to time I booted Windows to do updates.Company IT had all the important stuff (support tickets, time management, asset management, ...) on Citrix. The network "security" was solely based on a fixed MAC address. So I booted Linux from the external disk. For a checkpoint VPN client (to connect to customer networks) I had a Windows VM in place. Even he authentication via Smartcard everything worked fine - you can access USB devices (cardreader for the smartcard) from virtualbox.