Windows 10: Did clean install of Win 10 on SSD - Want to put Win 7 on hard drive

I probably went about this backwards. I had Windows 7 installed on a 120GB SSD with my User files & some Program Files on a 1TB hard drive. I did a clean install of Windows 10 on the SSD last night. Now I have decided that I want to keep the Windows 7 OS also, but I am not sure what "dual boot" means or entails.

I am sure I will have to partition D drive to install Windows 7 on & I just noticed that my CD/DVD drive is not showing. I will need help with this also please.

And, what do I need to do to combine the User files for Windows 7 & 10 on the D drive, or is this even how to go about it?

I have attached my setup in Disk Management & my system info here: http://speccy.piriform.com/results/Q...vy5IOEIVsJcTne

:)

 

Failed Windows 10 upgrades from Windows 8.1 Pro - Boot repair error 0xc000000f - Corrupt NTFS partition

Something is up with Windows 10 and SSD Hard drives\Dells, have 3 Latitudes all with SSD drives, all had same issue, able to resolve 2 of them, still working on 1 of them.

Solution,

Take out your SSD Hard Drive

Put in a Reg non SSD Hard Drive

Install Win 7 SP1 or Win 8

Download Windows Media tool\Win 10 ISO (Create USB or DVD)

Upgrade to Windows 10 using USB\ISO, when complete, make sure its Activated

Now, put back in your SSD Hard Drive, do a clean install using the USB\ISO

Boom, you're up and going, hasn't worked on 1/3 Dell notebooks, researching will post update.

 

Al

Have a HTPC running win 7 home on a SSD and would like to upgrade to win 10.

I had no like with the same upgrade from 7 to 10 on this PC - got stuck in upgrade and would not roll back. I had to clean install win 7 on to a hard drive and rebuild the drive and the install upgrade.

So can I clone the SSD to a hard drive and upgrade it?

 

If you used that same W7 to upgrade to 10, than you don't have license to W7 any more. It's been "traded" so you can't legally use it any more.
Otherwise it's not a problem. Best way is to temporarily disconnect SSD and install whatever OS you want on HDD. After that you can reinstall HDD and use program called EasyBCD on the SSD to set a menu from which you can choose which OS to BOOT from. There are other ways but this one is easiest and safest.

 

To add a little bit to CountMike's post - after you install the second OS on the hard drive, and have both drives connected again, you want the SSD to be on the first SATA port and the hard drive to be on the second SATA port. Boot the computer from the SSD into Windows 10. Then you can either use EasyBCD to add a boot menu item for the Windows on hard drive.

Or

Windows 10 should assign a drive letter to the second Windows partition. Let's say it gets drive letter E:\. Right click on the start icon, select Command Prompt (Admin). In the command prompt window run:

BCDBOOT E:\Windows /d /addlast

The path in red will be the drive letter Windows 10 gives to the second OS partition and the Windows folder of that partition.

 

My two cents:
I have no problems dual booting Windows 8.1 and Windows 10, using the W8.1 retail key for W8.1, (from whence I upgraded), while Windows 10 retains it's digital entitlement; on the same machine of course!
Different machine would be a different story of course.
Just sayin!

 

The fact that you have no problems doing it does not change the fact that it violates the EULA in order to do it.

 

Sorry for the delay. I have been away. If I understand correctly, I do not have to partition the hard drive for Windows 7. I have it on a flash drive. Do I run setup.exe or do I boot from flash drive? The SSD drive is on the first SATA port already & the hard drive on the second one.

 

If you are wanting to clean install Windows 7 to the HDD, then you disconnect the SSD, and boot the computer from the Windows 7 USB flash drive. After Windows 7 is installed on the HDD, reconnect the SSD and boot the computer from it, run the BCDBOOT command to add the Windows 7 to the boot menu on the SSD.

 

LOL... he's just a bad boy, truth be told!.... but seriously, he was one one of the first to purchase one of the Win 10 USB's when it launched.

 

The simple answer is to use Oracle VM VirtualBox its free and you dont need to mess with paritions and boot it just run as a virtual pc and you can run any other o/s like linux, win95 etc

 

I only require an occasional spanking! *Wink

 

Where do I download Oracle VM VirtualBox to...the SSD or the hard drive?

 

I installed Windows 7 on the hard drive after I disconnected the SSD. I just noticed that the drive letter for Windows 7 is C: - the same as my SSD Windows 10 OS. Now what?

 

That is normal. When you boot Windows 7 it will assign C as the letter for the boot partition. Whatever system you are running gets assigned C.

You can carry on with what @NavyLCDR said in post 3 - plug in your SSD, boot into Windows 10 and run the bcdboot command. When you boot 10 it will assign C as the letter for the Windows 10 boot partition and it will assign some other letter for the Windows 7 one on the HDD. Most likely this will be E in which case:

You might want to rename the boot menu entries "Windows 7" and "Windows 10" for clarity (I can't remember the default names) but you can do that after if you want to - it isn't required.