Windows 10: Dual boot with Windows 10 and 7

When I ordered my new Windows 10 laptop it was ordered with a 1TB SSD, I expected it to be a single 1TB SSD, but it arrived with 2 SSDs, both of which are 500 GB and have different drive letters. The first SSD is the Windows 10 op sys drive with installed apps. The second one is for data storage only. Is there and reason that I should not install Windows 7 on the second drive in a dual boot arrangement?

Thanks in advance for any advice. *Smile

:)

 

Dual Boot Change from Windows 8.1 & 7 to Windows 10 & 7

I have a dual boot Windows 8.1 and Windows 7.

(1) Is it possible to have a triple boot Windows 10, Windows 8.1 and Windows 7?

(2) If not, can I just upgrade the Windows 8.1 to Windows 10 to have a dual boot Windows 10 and Windows 7? Or do I have to do the normal dual boot set-up?

 

How do I restore dual boot capability after Windows 10 clean install removed it

My computer was dual-boot with Windows 7 boot partitions on two separate drives. After upgrading to Windows 10, the dual boot provision worked fine. However after a clean install of Windows 10, dual-boot capability is no longer available. The boot partition
for the remaining Windows 7 syBistem is intact. Only the dual boot option is gone.

I tried the changing the default operating system under System Properties/Advanced/Startup and Recovery, but the only choice is Windows 10. Windows 7 isn't a option. I'm guessing that the clean Windows 10 install wiped out access to the dual-boot menu.

Thanks.

Bill

 

There is no real reason for that. But first make sure you can get all the Win7 drivers for your system.

Btw - the two 500GB disks is a good deal. Much better than a single 1TB drive.

 

A pair of 1tb drives would have been better! As far as 7 goes however better to plan on running 7 on VM since anything seen now that comes with 10 preinstalled won't be seeing anything for 7 let alone 8, 8.1! unless it is a model that has been out for a period of time like what Dell offers as far as the choice of OSs on what they sell by custom order only! The product page as well as links to support pages can be seen at http://us.vaio.com/vaio-z-canvas/?ut...nvas%20Product

The software updates only show 10 only type updates!

 

Wouldn't the more relevant question be is there a reason to install Windows 7 on the second drive? However, there is no reason not to. If you get it installed and find out that you can't find drivers for some hardware, all you've lost is time.

 

VAIO is a now a Japanese company and had I been able to purchase it in Japan and not through Microsoft, the exclusive US supplier, I would have had the choice of Win 10 or 7. But Microsoft in the US will only sell them with Win 10. I don't really have a problem with Win 10's performance, it is the ghastly GUI that I could do without, especially the tiles. As an option to installing Win 7, I am considering installing an alternative interface like Classic Shell.

I have some experience using a VM on an older Dell laptop, but it did not perform well, mainly I suspect due to lack of resources like memory. My other current PCs and laptops either run WIn 7 or Win7/XP in dual boot config. Using the Win 10 GUI is so different from these, it is like owning and operating a prop plane compared to a jet. The only similarity is that they both fly.

Any comments on Classic Shell would be helpful.

 

In Japan it is available with either 7 or 10, so drivers should not really be an issue. However note my real dislike of WIn 10 in my response to Night Hawk. BTW, time I have now. So far I have not found any of my Win 7 apps that do not run on 10.

 

No reason not to try it. On the second SSD. Just be aware, if you ever get to the point where you want Windows 7 exclusively and want to wipe out the Windows 10, you must be aware on which SSD the boot files are located and make sure to move them to the SSD that is not going to get wiped clean.

Also, you must disable secure boot in Bios before installing Windows 7.

 

The best option for seeing a dual boot would first be unplugging the 10 drive entirely since the new boot loader would otherwise need to go on last in order to see 7 added in as a boot option. Since 10 is already on the first drive you may have to pull that out entirely and move the second over to where the first drive plugs in order to see that maintain the boot sequence if you are unable to bring up the boot device menu.

Once the 7 install is seen to only first locating the 7 support needed you then move that back to where it was and plug the 10 drive back in. From there you can add EasyBCD to see the 7 added in and afterwards boot into 7 to see it installed there as well. You can then switch back and forth between which will be set as the default OS.

Now as far as replacing the default Start to lose the tiles the Stardock Start10 app offers the new 10 style without tiles as well as the 10 menu and older 7 style menu options. Here it was the quick choice for the Modern without tiles!





The choice was simple was that was bought for $4.99US from Stardock as far as "Losing the Metro Tiles"! I saw Classic Shell when first looking at 8 and even back then was more interested in Stardock's older Start menu 7 app but passed on the 8, 8.1 circus entirely.

 

At this juncture, I am reluctant to open the case for two reasons. It is built like an iPad with no visible decices allowing the case to be removed, and secondly and maybe more importantly it has a two year warranty on it so I don't want to jeopardize that. I most likely will go with Night Hawk's suggestion and install 7 as a VM on the first drive. Now I have to find the right VM software...hmmm....back to the drawing board me thinks.

 

Use this:

http://www.sevenforums.com/virtualiz...p-operate.html

 

The Classic Shell Start Button is dynamite on Windows 8. You don't need it on 7.

I have XP, 10, and 8 on separate partitions on the same computer, and they all work well. I upgraded 7 to 10 because I wasn't using it anymore. I see little benefit in installing a legal copy of 7 on your other SSD, plus backwards installations usually don't work well. The architecture for Win 7 has been improved so heavily by now that I doubt that Win 7 will run well on your rig.

 

The program I still with here having already tried out the Hyper-V option would be the latest VMware Workstation 12 Player which is free for home use and won't take up that much space for the installation itself. Then you simply opt for no larger then a 60gb VM for 7 to run on. I even upgraded a 7 VM to 10 lately to see how that would go.

Want to try out some new Linux distro some time? WS 12 will cover that as well. And if you have enough system memory you can even having multiple VMs running together while that would be mainly seen on the desktop. VMs can also be backed to other drives and when run you simply select the moved option in case you need to free up drive space on the main itself.