Windows 10: Dual boot, exist win10 + win7 from image on different drives

I have win10 installed and running and I’d like to create a dual boot by restoring an image that I made of my old win7 system immediately before upgrade to win10 and then doing a clean install on a new SSD. I realize that I will need to buy a win7 key and I plan to use an OEM version that I will purchase from MicroCenter but before I do I’d like to know if I understand the process correctly.

1. Disconnect the SSD where win10 is installed and then restore the image of win 7 to the m2 SSD where it was originally installed, but do not boot from it yet. This now has H as a drive letter.

2. Reconnect the win10 SSD and let it boot up and then open a commend prompt (admin) and enter:

3. Bcdboot H:\Windows /d/addlast

4. Adjust the timeout with msconfig.

5. Update the license for the win7 using the new OEM key.

Do I have it right?

:)

 

Is it safe to increase the size of my System Reserved partition in a Win7/Win10 dual boot?

I have Windows 7 and Windows 10 in a dual-boot state (Win10 installed after Win7, both on different drives); but my Win7 installation does not create a separate
System Reserved partition. I assume that all Win10 files which are stored in a
System Reserved partition are stored in the System Reserved partition created by Win7...

...But there is one problem: As a stand-alone OS, Win10 creates a 500MB
System Reserved partition, and my Win7 System Reserved partition is only 100MB, and my dual-boot Win10 installation is using or sharing the Win7
System Reserved partition, since it was created first.

Here's the dual-boot screen:





Here's the dual-boot setup in Win10:





And here is the dual-boot setup in Win7:





Given a test run, I discovered that, with Win7 and Win10 on your machine, you can't have 2 separate
System Reserved partitions (one on the Win7 drive and one on the Win10 drive), because upon boot of one OS or the other, errors, blue screens and the need to repeatedly check the disks for consistency have the potential to corrupt either one OS or
both.

Since my assumption is that the Win7/Win10 dual-boot setup shares the same
System Reserved partition, is it safe to increase the size of this partition to 600MB (100MB for Win7 + 500MB for Win10), especially with the possibility that Win10 may dump enough files into this partition to completely fill or overwhelm the original
100MB that was created with the Win7 installation? I have Acronis Disk Director 12, which can resize any volume, before or after the OS partition.

 

ual boot system upgrade to windows 10

Thanks Jessen for the hint. I was expecting a yes or no answer, since I already have a dual boot system(xp+win7), and if I upgrade win10 from win7 boot, would win7 be replaced by win10 and becomes a (xp+win10) dual boot system?

But it looks more complicated than I thought, should I check current system has xp and win7 are installed in DIFFERENT partitions, otherwise xp would be gone after win7 is upgraded to win10 if xp and win7 are in SAME partition?

 

There is no need to disconnect the primary (first) SSD, and you only need to restore the OS partition only to the second SSD. You don't need any of the other partitions that might have been imaged.

 

TY NavyLCDR. I was wondering about the strategy of restoring only the Win7 OS partition. Now I know.
Bob

 

Unless you are going to physically boot that drive from UEFI, all you need is the OS partition. In your configuration the computer will boot from the first SSD and load a boot menu that will load the OS partition you pick.

 

Worked perfectly and saved me a little bit of disk space. I also used your previous tip of bcdboot %windir% to get a graphical menu.*Thumbs