Hello, I have an existing Windows 10 PC. I have a 1TB hard drive, and I want to make a partition and install Windows 7 on that partition. Microsoft says that installing the older operating system last can "render your system inoperable", so I'm not sure. Obviously, Windows 10 is already installed so I can't "install the older OS first." Any help or answers? Can I do it without screwing my system? Thanks!
Hello Clockwork Welcome to the Ten Forums!
Yes it will by rewriting the mbr information in favor of the 7 install you are planning. You then would need to repair the boot sector either by the command prompt option if electing not to use the Startup Repair tool also seen in 10 as well as in Vista/7.8.8.1! The rewrite to correct the boot sector would then see 10 back but may not see 7 until added in as a boot option.
Here besides seeing both 10 Pro and Home VMs as well as 7 Pro and Ultimate now on VM I also have two desktops both seeing 10/7 dual boots but on two separate drives. The boot entry for each is simply added into the other version's BCD store using a free app called EasyBCD you may have heard of already! The first version of that one was seen for Vista many years ago and commonly used. First however you will want to review the guide for setting a dual boot of 10 with 7, 8, 81. seen at Windows 10 - Dual Boot with Windows 7 or Windows 8 - Windows 10 Forums
I saw your other two threads about XP and 7 suggesting you were now looking to get 7 going. Here I decided to keep 7 running on both machines since 10 can't connect by WiFi on the portable 7 case while 7 can't connect by ethernet there either! Kind of a mixed up batch of problems!
On the main build 10 was initially being looked over and later I simply bought a Black Friday deal on 10 providing a separate license key. The 10 drive is now the host/boot drive and the lastest EasyBCD 2.3 works on 7 as well as 10 to see have boot entries where you can be booted in one and see that set as the default or the other back and forth! Infoworld provides a direct download link where you don't have to enter any email address as you would at the neosmart site. Download EasyBCD 2.3 For Windows 10
I installed my other operating system including a few Linux flavors in virtual partitions that reside on an external SSD attached via USB3. And that works well. The big advantage is that I can carry them to any of my other PCs. Here is how.
http://www.sevenforums.com/virtualiz...p-operate.html
1. Mount/extract the Windows 7 iso image
You will need to mount the Windows 7 iso so you can access the install.wim file or You could even use 7zip to simply extract the contents of the iso instead.
2. Create a partition for Windows 7
You can use Windows Disk Management or any third-party tools to create a partition for Windows 7.
3. Download imagex.zip
Download imagex.zip and extract it to c:\imagex.
4. Run imagex /apply to extract install.wim
Open an elevated command prompt, run the following command:
cd c:\imagex
imagex /apply e:\sources\install.wim 1 h:\
5. Get Ready to Boot
Once imagex is done, run the following command:
bcdboot h:\Windows
More infomation about bcdboot: BCDboot Command-Line Options
6. Reboot and Enjoy!
Reboot into bios and disable the uefi secure boot if your computer is a UEFI-based computer (Windows 7 does not support uefi secure boot, so we need to disable it) then save and reboot. Now you get to see the dual boot menu, have fun!!
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