Windows 10: Help with Dual Booting Driver Issues

CountMike said:

Windows 7 might not have proper drivers than. Two OSs in dual boot can't share drivers, to each one it's own, Check with HP to see if they have drivers for W7 and install them in W7. Some of W8 or W10 drivers may work too but you would have to install them manually in W7.

Ok I will try that. The network adapter drivers I downloaded said that they were compatible with windows 7 x64 bit which is what I have. I'm at school right now prepping for exams. Thanks for the help.

NavyLCDR said:

I don't know if any Windows 10 drivers will work with Windows 7, but you can export all the third party drivers from Windows 10. Create a folder to hold the drivers. Like E:\Win10Drivers (drive letter and folder of your choice, just an example). Then open a Command Prompt (Admin) and run:

dism /online /export-driver /destination:E:\Win10Drivers

Then in your Windows 7 device manager you can right click on any hardware that has an exclamation point, or an unknown device and go to the options to manually upgrade drivers and point it to the E:\Win10Drivers folder (or whatever folder you created), make sure the box for subfolders is checked, and if one of the exported drivers is compatible it will load.

I seriously doubt, though, there will be any Windows 10 drivers compatible with Windows 7 - it usually will only work the other way, you might get a Windows 7 or 8 driver to work in Windows 10.

If the laptop is a newer model and was manufactured for Windows 10, the manufacturer isn't going to spend the money to make Windows 7 or 8 work on it.

Thank you I tried something similar but this seems to be way more feasible. This community has been great so far thank you for all the help guys!

cpt20xx said:

Thank you I tried something similar but this seems to be way more feasible. This community has been great so far thank you for all the help guys!

Also note, the drive letter you create the folder to hold the drivers will probably change between booting Windows 10 and Windows 7 - your folder on E: drive in Windows 10 might be on C: drive in Windows 7.

NavyLCDR said:

Also note, the drive letter you create the folder to hold the drivers will probably change between booting Windows 10 and Windows 7 - your folder on E: drive in Windows 10 might be on C: drive in Windows 7.

Yeah from windows 10, 7 is the D:\ drive and from 7, 10 is the D:\ drive. Thank you

NavyLCDR said:

I don't know if any Windows 10 drivers will work with Windows 7, but you can export all the third party drivers from Windows 10. Create a folder to hold the drivers. Like E:\Win10Drivers (drive letter and folder of your choice, just an example). Then open a Command Prompt (Admin) and run:

dism /online /export-driver /destination:E:\Win10Drivers

Then in your Windows 7 device manager you can right click on any hardware that has an exclamation point, or an unknown device and go to the options to manually upgrade drivers and point it to the E:\Win10Drivers folder (or whatever folder you created), make sure the box for subfolders is checked, and if one of the exported drivers is compatible it will load.

Also think best to try find Win 7 drivers first

For this situation, a dual boot, I think you can skip DISM export to a folder. When you try Update Driver for Win 7 device, just browse to the DriverStore in the Win 10 partition. In this case, D:\Windows\System32\DriverStore

Great news!! We're all happy to help