Dual boot anyone?

@COMPUTIAC
You make a very good point, but I would not like to be put in a position where at some time in the future my Windows 10 installation becomes ineligible for updates.
I wish MS would be clearer in their statements about the activation dependencies, motherboard? how?

That has always been the case when you use an upgrade version, the license you upgraded is no longer valid. If you ever wanted to upgrade to the latest version of Windows, but needed to continue using the older version, you can't upgrade, you must buy a separate license.

MacNala said:

I wish MS would be clearer in their statements about the activation dependencies, motherboard? how?

It's always been a gray area, in terms of what constitutes a new computer. You have to keep in mind that only a very small percentage build or upgrade computers. The vast majority of people buy a computer, then buy a new one when they need it. The safest way to consider "a new computer" is the go by the motherboard. If that's changed, it is a new computer.

MacNala said:

I would be interested in the answers as well.
I have a laptop which I currently have dual booting to 'Win7' or 'Win 10 preview 10240'.
The HDD has three partitions one each for Win7 and Win10 and one for local backups.
What I want to do is upgrade the Win7 to Win 10 and then plan to clean install Win 10 in the Win 10 Preview partition and finally restore my local image of Win 7 to it's original partition.

Anyone any comments on problems I might encounter?

If you upgrade your Win 7 to 10, you will not be able to use your image of 7 on another partition.
Once you do the upgrade from 7 to 10 your license for 7 usage is invalidated.

If you are in the insider program, you can upgrade 10 TP to the newest version but, you must stay in the insider program to continue to use it.
It will not become another free copy of 10.

DeaconFrost said:

It's always been a gray area, in terms of what constitutes a new computer. You have to keep in mind that only a very small percentage build or upgrade computers. The vast majority of people buy a computer, then buy a new one when they need it. The safest way to consider "a new computer" is the go by the motherboard. If that's changed, it is a new computer.

Excellent !

COMPUTIAC said:

Are you in the insider program ?
If you are, just up grade the 10 you have to the newest version and stay on as an insider.
You can move it to any HDD you want to on the same 'puter.

Your 7 has nothing to do with it.

Yes I am an Insider but I haven't been able to upgrade since build 9926. I do me "upgrade" not clean install the ISO after an ESD to ISO conversion or downloaded ISO. It also stopped receiving new builds some time ago.

Early on that point was a bit iffy and I haven't been following W10TP that much, too busy with house projects. Doesn't really matter much now as I got W8.1 today but I could save it though!

I don't remember if I read this scenario or not? As an Insider, if I did a clean install the 10240 ISO now, would it upgrade?? Or is that the catch to stay an Insider? Don't know what the advantages are really!

EDIT: I guess the Insider part of my question was answered above.

You would need to do the upgrade first.
Then you can do a clean install.

You can use this tool to do the upgrade, it will give you a choice to either do a upgrade or D/L the ISO.

Windows 10

I don't remember if I read this scenario or not? As an Insider, if I did a clean install the 10240 ISO now, would it upgrade?? Or is that the catch to stay an Insider? Don't know what the advantages are really!

As to "upgrading". MS has said that the Insider 10240 is essentially the same as the Released version of Win10. That means there is no newer Insider build for 10240 to upgrade TO. If you're asking will it "upgrade" to the Released version, no, it will not. The Insider versions will never convert over to Released version, they will always stay Insider.

MS has disabled the activation servers for the Insider program and also, invalidated all of the Insider keys. So, installing clean right now is going to leave you with an unactivated install. As to when MS will allow Insider activations again, I don't know -- haven't seen anything posted about that.

I might try an in place upgrade to 10240 from the ISO first but I doubt if it'll work as so many previous ones didn't!

Oh well, probably just upgrade from W8.1 as planned.

DeaconFrost said:

However, I'll throw a wrinkle in to say there's no reason to dual-boot anymore. If you want to maintain a separate, older OS version, simply virtualize it. So many benefits over dual-booting, and it doesn't over-complicate a system set up. There's shouldn't be many hardware compatibility issues between 7/8/8.1/10, so keep it simple and virtualize.

Well, I need the XP Mode option as well. I have old electronic test equipment that interfaces with a PC that needs XP. Not sure if that would work in a virtual PC, it's even quirky in XP Mode which is just a MS virtual PC anyway.