Windows 10: Dual boot Win10 with Win7 or Win 8.1 you already have on your PC

I am a computer technician and I work out of my home.

I probably have a half-dozen computers. A few are running Windows 7 Home Premium, one has been set up to dual boot to Windows 7 Pro or Windows XP Pro and one has Windows 7 Pro and Windows 8.1 Pro (another dual boot system).

I recently took my Dell OptiPlex 380 PC that was running Windows 7 Pro, with a 500 GB hard drive and UPDATED it to Windows 10. The update took less than an hour and everything is running fine.

By updating to Windows 10 Pro means I can no longer use Windows 7 Pro, right? Wrong!

After UPDATING to Windows 10 Pro, I simply reduced the size of my 500 GB hard drive by 200 GB and made a new partition which I named WIN7PRO. Then I booted to my Windows 7 Pro DVD and installed the OS onto the 200 GB partition. Since I had been running Windows 7 Pro on this system, and have a Product Key sticker on the top of the case, I was able to activate Windows by simply entering the Product Key.

When I rebooted the PC, I was given the option of using Windows 10 Pro or Windows 7 Pro (with Windows 10 Pro as the default OS, which means if I did nothing it would boot into Windows 10 Pro).

Everything works just fine with both Operating Systems.

Here's by beef with Microsoft on this issue:

Why should we have to UPGRADE to Windows 10 and lose our already installed Windows 7, which is supported by Microsoft until January 14, 2020?

Windows 10 is supported until October 14, 2025, the End of Extended Support Date.

The Dell OptiPlex 380 PC is NOT my main computer, I have another one running Windows 7 Pro that I have been using for well over a year. Doing the Windows 10 UPDATE and reinstalling Windows 7 Pro was a no-brainer for me.

But what if I did this with my main computer? There is a good chance that some of the programs running fine on Windows 7 Pro may not function properly with Windows 10.

Microsoft could show it cares about their customers by allowing anyone who wants to run a dual-boot system with their Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 PC by allowing them to simply install Windows 10 on a different partition on their hard drive or better yet on another hard drive installed in their system. It would save their customers a great deal of angst plus give them a safe way to compare the two operating systems without losing any of their data.

:)

 

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?

 

Why does my dvd writer not show up in Win10

I have a dual boot system running Win7 and Win10. I upgraded from win7 to win10, then installed win 7 on seperate drive. I have a LG Super-Multi GH24NS90 internal SATA DVD Rewriter, which works in win7 but is not visible in
win 10. It is on the compatibility list as being compatible to win10 but does not show up in my device manager or windows explorer. It will not read any discs in win10. Any ideas?

 

No Offense but you do understand Microsoft is giving a FREE Windows 10 by upgrading, right ? How they like to allow it is all up to them . No one said you can't buy windows 10 and do as you said . But, if you want a free windows 10 ? You can by upgrading from a prior windows 7, 8 and 8.1 OS don't you think you should at least abide to their agreement ? Also, since you used your windows 7 copy twice, once to upgrade to 10 not update but upgrade to 10 legally you can't use the 7 disk and install it again on a different or even on the same hard drive, which is what you just did by installing it on a partition drive .

 

So if I will upgrade to windows 10 I will lose my 7 licence?
I want to upgrade my 7 on other hard drive make an image and then reinstall the old drive with windows 7.

thanks

 

Technically, yes. However, I can tell you from experience that you can "keep and update". As long as you don't change the hardware (different motherboard, etc.), you can boot from either the Win 7 drive or the Win 10 drive. Neither Windows install will be picked up as "unauthorized".

In practice, what you'll find is that either you'll decide you don't want Win 10 or you'll switch to it. Nevertheless, keep both. If, for instance, you gradually switch to Win 10, months later you might try to launch a "once in a blue moon" program and find out it's not compatible with Win 10.

There is one other possible problem: A lot of programs recognize when they are on a different OS or they periodically "phone home" to the vendor's activation server. You may find that when you boot a program from Win 10 it recognizes a new OS and requires reactivation. It's possible you've already used up the number of activations, meaning the Win 10 copy won't run.

Related to that, the Win 10 copy could run fine. And then when you go to run the Win 7 copy, that copy "phones home" and says you've used up your activations. So even though you have done nothing to the Win 7 copy, you won't be able to run it. And it might not "phone home" the first time you run it after running the Win 10 copy. So it might run fine for a week, and if it "phones home" weekly or monthly, at that point it won't work.

 

You can upgrade and run either one, but not both. You can only have either the Windows 7 or the Windows 10 on that machine and the other one is not legal on any other machine.