Windows 10: dual booting windows 7 and 10

Hello,

Apologies if this is in the wrong area, I am new to this site so please move this if appropriate.

I have recently just upgraded to a new laptop, due to my old laptop (4 years old, running windows 7) has been giving me overheating issues for what seems like an eternity. This new laptop, a HP with intel i7, has Windows 10.

The laptop runs a lot cooler than my old Windows 7 laptop however some of the older games that I have, which work fine on windows 7, do not on windows 10.

Since my laptop has a 2TB hard drive, I am thinking about dual booting Windows 10 and 7 on the same laptop. I know this is possible, but I have never performed a dual boot setup on a laptop before and am worried I might mess things up.

Can someone on here please give me some detailed help on performing a dual boot? This would assume partitioning the hard drive into (C) Windows 10 (approx. 1TB), (D) Recovery partition for 10 (already installed) and (F) 1TB for Windows 7. (The E drive is my DVD writer.)

Thanks in advance for your help!

:)

 

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

 

Hi spotify95, welcome to Ten Forums. These are from the tutorial forums. The first to add a partition. Windows 10 - Dual Boot with Windows 7 or Windows 8 - Windows 10 Forums .

 

Hello,

Thank you for the helpful advice. I will have those two tabs open on my windows 7 laptop so that it is easier to follow the instructions to dual boot. As this is the first time I have ever dual booted a laptop.

I'll let you know how I get on.

One last question, which is slightly related: once I have set up the dual boot system, will I need to install any drivers or will they install themselves?

 

You will have to install drivers for Windows 7 since it is a separate installation. It has no difference if it was taking the whole hard disk instead of dual boot.

To summarize the steps for dual boot:

1) Shrink Windows 10 partition to make room for Windows 7
2) Create a new partition on the empty space and format this to NTFS
3) Insert Windows 7 DVD, start setup and select Custom installation (you cannot upgrade Windows 10 anyway since it is later version).
4) When presented with your disk partitions, select the new partition and proceed to install Windows 7
5) Install all drivers starting from the chipset and then graphics.
6) Install any application you will need (remember this is a separate Windows installation).

 

Hi there, thanks for the summary of things.

Where would I be able to find the drivers from? Would it be somewhere in the Windows 10 part, or would it be from HP's website? I have never done a dual boot system before and don't want to mess things up.

Thanks!

edit: I've found the drivers page here: HP Notebook - 15-ac153sa (ENERGY STAR) Drivers and Downloads | HP® Customer Support
so once I've dual booted with Windows 7, do I just go to that website and install the drivers from there? I don't have a driver CD or anything, the only thing that came with the laptop is a windows 10 recovery USB stick, which isn't needed at the moment as I am planning to dual boot 10 with 7.
Sorry if this sounds a bit daft but I've never done a dual boot before and don't want to mess up my laptop.

 

Yes you can download the drivers from HP and install them. You should be fine. Avoid any useless utilities that consume memory. Install only the Quick Launcher or similar to enable the key combinations.

 

Hello,

On the dual boot setup I am getting error 0x6: Windows could not update the installation files. To Install Windows, close Setup and restart the installation. Any ideas?

Hi, thanks for the advice.

When I am trying to initiate the installation of Windows 7, I am getting the error above. Any ideas?

 

Your "system reserved" partition that holds the boot files is probably too small. If you post a screenshot of your disc management screen showing your partitions, we can tell for sure. It easiest to use MiniTool Partition Wizard Free to shrink whatever partition you need to in order to make the system reserved partition bigger.

 

Hello,

Below is the screenshot of my disk management screen. Drive F is where I am putting Windows 7 and Drive G is where I have mounted my ISO file for Windows 7.

Can you tell from there which is my system partition and in which case what do you recommend for resizing of the system partition?

 

In order to do a clean install and set up dual booting of Windows 7 you are going to have to boot from a Windows 7 installation USB/DVD. Burn a DVD or make a bootable USB from the Windows 7 ISO file and boot from it.

Your system reserved partition should be the first "EFI System Partition". 260mb is probably big enough. You can try making it 350mb by removing 90mb from the front of the Windows C: partition and adding it to the EFI System Partition using MiniTool Partition Wizard Free, but the first thing I would try is booting from a Windows 7 USB or DVD made from the ISO. IMGBURN works well for making DVD's, RUFUS is pretty good for making bootable USBs.

Best Free Partition Manager for Windows | MiniTool Partition Free
The Official ImgBurn Website
Rufus - Create bootable USB drives the easy way

 

Hi, thanks for the reply.

I am just downloading ImgBurn now so that I can have a bootable Windows 7 DVD. This will also be useful for if I end up having to recover the system somehow.

I currently have mounted the Windows 7 ISO file, how do I create a DVD from that using ImgBurn? Will plain DVD-R's be ok for the job?

Sorry if I am asking so many questions, I have never done this before.
Thanks.

 

Furthermore, I have just seen this on the Microsoft website:

Installing more than one operating system (multi-boot) - Windows Help


Does this mean that my windows 10 will become unbootable when I have installed windows 7?

 

Help please!

I have made a bootable DVD and it still comes up with the error when I try and boot from DVD. Any solutions?