Windows 10: Dual boot system

I am trying to set up a dual boot system with windows 7 and win10 each on different hard drives


I am trying to help a freidn who has accounting software

her computer is running windows7(OEM), intel,I5 3rd or 4th gen(3XXX), 8gb memory, and 500gb hard drive. the computer is a Dell optima7010


She need to upgrade to new software that operates under windows 10 professional, but still needs toaccess the old software and data under win7 but cannot afford or have the space for another computer. She would only need to access the older stuff occasionally


To me it seems the best way is to set up a dual boot system using 2 different hard drives. The old drive cold left as is and win10 and new software installled on new drive.


How would the licensing for windows work. Can you have 2 versions of window licensed for the same computer at the same time. regarding the dual boot it seems that I can default to win10 boot then when win7 is needed can hit a fnction key to select which drive to boot from. Plan on putting win10 on a 1 TB drive,


any issues here. Is there a better way to accomplish this.


thanks in advance for any help

:)

 

Dual Booting with Windows 8.1


The procedure below will allow you to boot Windows separately or in dual boot configuration.
Here's what I recommend to do:

1. Disconnect the drive containing Windows 8.1
2. Install Windows 10 with one drive connected.
3. After step 2, reconnect the drive containing Windows 8.1
4. Boot up Windows 8.1. Open disk management and take a note of the drive letter of Windows 10 OS.
   NOTE: if you boot up Windows 10, then take a note of Windows 8.1 drive letter
5. Open Admin command prompt and type: bcdboot X:\windows where X: is the drive letter of Windows 10 (Windows 8.1 if you boot from Windows 10 in step 4)
6. Reboot the PC. You should have a dual boot screen.

NOTE: To break off the dual boot setting, Win+R->msconfig->boot and delete the none default entry on the list.

 

Dual Booting

Please follow the steps in the tutorial for how to post the screenshot. I cannot even see Disk 0, 1 and 2 on the drive map, and the columns were not spread so i can see the labels in the listings above even though it lllustates how to do this.

As long as you don't have a UEFI install then you can move the boot loader to Windows 10 so that it manages the Dual Boot using it's menu, add the Dual Boot back from there. These same steps using EasyBCD should do it:

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/209885-boo...

 

No Windows Boot Manager on dual boot system (7 & 10)


I thought I'd just post a little guide.

This is the only thing that worked on my ASUS N55SF dual boot system: Win7 on HDD (MBR) and Win10 on SSD (GPT).

Step 1
Assuming that you have already Win7 installed on your primary disk, install Win10 on your secondary disk.

Step 2
When install is done, enter your BIOS and go to the Boot section. There you should see "Windows Boot Manager" as your default boot option. Change it so that your primary disk (where you have Win7 installed) becomes your default boot option (it should be something like "P0:" followed by your disk model number, mine is "P0: ST9750423AS"). Save and restart.

Step 3
Now Win7 should start automatically (no boot manager showing up). Enter Win7, open an elevated command prompt and run
bcdboot X:\windows
where X is the Win10 system partition as seen from Win7, typically E, F, G or H.

Step 4
Restart. You should now see the Windows Boot Manager (probably the Windows 10 GUI boot manager). Select Windows 10, install your audio drivers (if you already have, I suggest you uninstall them and restart before doing this), restart and you're done.