Windows 7/10 dual boot?

About time I changed to Windows 10 (Pro) I guess. However, I would perhaps (still mulling pros and cons) like to have a dual boot with my current Windows 7 (Home) - the PC is 99% used for gaming (X-Plane 11) and some of the older hardware I use, and want to keep, such as a Nostromo N52 keypad, is probably not going to work in Windows 10. I have read through the tutorial here, on how one can still upgrade for free:

Upgrade to Windows 10 from Windows 7 for Free

Can I use that tutorial somehow to set up a dual boot? Would I have to install an image of my current Win7 installation onto my target partition first, and then update that copy (I have a 400GB empty partition on one of my (internal) SSDs)? My worry of course is not being able to boot after I do that!

Help appreciated. Thank you.

If you upgrade for free you use your 7 key for 10 so it may not activate the old 7 as you have used the key

You can't upgrade Win 7 Home to Win 10 Pro for free.

Ah, no, of course not! Probably would rather pay for Win10 Pro than a free upgrade to Win10 Home though. So I need to seek out a tutorial here for a 'simple' Win7/10 dual boot, adding Win10 Pro as a new O/S on my empty SSD partition (haven't located such a tutorial here as yet, but sure there must be one!).

Or possibly, I may just ditch my Windows 7 altogether and install Win10 Pro instead, even though that may mean some gaming hardware purchases... But advice like this, from X-Plane forums, disinclines me somewhat to do that:

IMO, if you only use your PC for flight simming.... try and stay on windows 7. windows 10 is a serious mess when it comes to updates and its endless fixes to fix things that updates break. its pain

Thanks.

Hi,
You can turn a macrium reflect system image of win-7 into a vhd I believe it is and use it in a virtual machine.

You can turn a macrium reflect system image of win-7 into a vhd I believe it is and use it in a virtual machine.

Once I worked out the finer details of what that actually means, and how to do it, what would be the advantage, as opposed to installing Win10 Pro onto the PC as a dual boot?

Hi,
I haven't tried it yet
I believe first step is actually make a system image in reflect
Then right click it and convert to vhd is an option

Create the image and point reflect to an empty ssd/ hdd you want it to be on and that should be the now dual boot drive.

Use win-10 vm features or vmware to run the virtual machine.

Yes, I think I see that. To be honest though, I think I am better just installing a copy of Windows 10 Pro onto the empty partition...

The videos I have watched on YouTube show that when you install Win10 onto a Win7 machine, the dual boot option is created automatically.. it just appears there when the PC reboots. Is that so? I remember that getting the dual boot window working when I added WinXP to my Win7 PC some years ago was not that straight forward, with a few heart-stopping moments of the PC refusing to boot at all along the way!

Hi,
Actually you'd want to remove win-7 hdd or ssd first before clean installing win-10.
that way they both have their own boot loader.

After 10 install reinstall 7's hdd/ ssd and use F8 for boot menu and select your os.

Hi,
Win-10 has way too many large updates to share a disk with.