Windows 10: It would be unreasonable for MS to not allow Win 7/8 + 10 dual boot

Tough on MS on that front.

 

I want to win Lotto also.

 

So buy a ticket first !

 

Buy one every week but I have the same chances of winning as not dual booting if I want to.

 

Dual-booting success depends on whether or not MS actually "deactivates" the license of the "older" OS as part of the "upgrade". If they do, sooner or later, when you reboot into the older OS, it won't work anymore.

I'm planning on using Win10 daily after the RTM, but I don't want to permanently give up the use of Win8.1 as part of the process. So, I'm planning on buying another Win8.1 license -- to continue to use it.

Funny thing is, I've checked with the vendors of other products I use, and they are OK with me using the same license across multiple OSs, as long as those are on the same PC.

 

I dual boot with my Win 7 license. I will upgrade with my Win 8.1 Pro license (one of them) so won't be an issue.

 

It is not the installations in a dual boot setup of WIO on one drive and W7/8 on the other, no problems experienced here.
The problems arise when Windows needs to Update, this in my experience is as you state, it messes up booting, this could be a deliberate ploy by M$ to deter this practice.
Until the official release it is difficult to know what is and is not possible
See below latest Gabe statement

 

Maybe I am lucky as I haven't experienced that issue during the updates so far.

 

Mark Phelps,

How would Microsoft know? If they deactivated mine windows 7, they would be deactivating a lot of other dells that didn't upgraded to windows 10. The reason my key is an oem-slp.


All,
I have triple booted in the past. I came across an issue with grub and windows 10 preview. If you don't disable grub, it won't upgrade to the next build. Doing one disk (Mbr) is a pain. You would need partition wizard, Macrium Reflect, Grub boot disk, windows 7 repair disk and some know how.

During all this testing, I found out how to do a clean install and keep the upgrade information. This way you can switch architectures don't know if that key is a temp key or permanent key.

 

The same way they would know if you changed the motherboard.
Do also take into account this is not a new O/S according to M$, it is an upgrade

 

Am interested to know how you have setup, then maybe I can avoid these hiccups.

 

Don't think I am doing anything special. I have Win 7 and Win 10 previews on two separate SSD's and doing a dual boot. All my SSD's and harddrives are in a quick release adapter like Badrobots picture. When either has updates I eject the other OS SSD so only the SSD with updates is actually installed at the time. If I didn't have the adapters and had to open my case each time, I wouldn't be doing any of this.

 

dencal

Do you know what an oem-slp key is? It is a key that pre-activated that dell uses on different systems. The way you are talking whether I upgraded or not, I maybe forced to use the key on the back of my machine to keep 7 or to upgrade to windows 10. One of the dell forum moderators/liaison in a blog is saying a clean install will be impossible with oem-slp windows 7 install. Upgrade will work without issue, clean install won't.

I actually came across a fix for that during my testing as well. Get the key from Belarc Advisor after you upgrade. Then replace or add the key to pid.txt file in the sources folder before installing. Windows 10 upgrade assigns you a new key.


Mod, please edit my post if I am not suppose to mention any or some of this.

 

This is my current plan.

 

In effect you do not have a true dual setup, which is the same as myself. disconnected one at a time.

I fear it will not be possible to do a dual boot in the future between the source and the update
In Gabe,s latest release notes, it states that in order to download the latest preview it can only be done via a Microsoft Account.
This of course means they know both the O/S,s being used.....the update plus the preview.
If they note that both O/S,s are being used (contravening their conditions), they could easily deactivate one of them.
Which is what I think happened to me, as both my O/S,s are registered in a M$ Account