How to Install & Activate Windows 10 & Windows 7 Dual Boot?

Steve C · 14 Nov 2017

I've been experimenting with an old 2004 PC. I originally bought a cheap Windows 7 Ultimate licence then upgraded it to Windows 10 32 bit FCU. The 64 bit version of Windows 10 won't install on my old CPU but Windows 7 64 bit does install.

How can I install a dual boot version of Windows 7 64 bit without affecting the current Windows 10 32 bit installation on the same SSD? Note the current Windows 10 installation is an upgrade from the original Windows 7 installation. Can I use the original Windows 7 key key to install Windows 7 or will MS activation fail for one of the installations since they would be sourced from the same key?

cereberus · 14 Nov 2017

It should not matter if you install 64bit 7 as dual boot with 32bit 10 installed as they will both be legacy bios.

Biggest issue is if you have free primary partitions as you can only have max of 4.

A better way to install 7 would be to create a virtual hard drive and install W7 to that which does not muck up existing install and need any new partitions.

Re. licencing - it will work fine but be aware you are strictly not in compliance with the EULA having two installations on same pc running off one licence. I leave it to you to judge morality of doing that.

Steve C · 14 Nov 2017

cereberus said:

It should not matter if you install 64bit 7 as dual boot with 32bit 10 installed as they will both be legacy bios.

Biggest issue is if you have free primary partitions as you can only have max of 4.

A better way to install 7 would be to create a virtual hard drive and install W7 to that which does not muck up existing install and need any new partitions.

Re. licencing - it will work fine but be aware you are strictly not in compliance with the EULA having two installations on same pc running off one licence. I leave it to you to judge morality of doing that.

Thanks. The current Windows 10 installation has 3 partitions but one is the recovery partition which I can delete. I'd rather not use the VM option. How do I actually install Windows 7 to create a dual boot system without affecting the current Windows 10 installation? I feel morally OK since I will only ever be using one OS at any one time.

AddRAM · 14 Nov 2017

Post a full shot of Disk Management.

What CPU is it ?

Personally, I'd put 7 on another drive.

Steve C · 14 Nov 2017

AddRAM said:

Post a full shot of Disk Management.

What CPU is it ?

Personally, I'd put 7 on another drive.

This is an old Athlon 3000+ CPU on an Asus A8N-SLI Socket 939 motherboard (my System 2). I'm just using it as a backup PC and to experiment with. I do have some modern PCs! There is a 119GB SSD (Disk 0) and 189GB HDD (Disk 1). I want to install Win 7 64 bit in addition to Win 10 32 bit on the SSD for speed. There are currently 3 partitions but the 450MB partition at the end of the drive is a recovery partition which can be deleted.
Attachment 163743

Steve C · 19 Nov 2017

I've successfully installed Windows 7 64 bit and Windows 10 32 bit on my old PC and all works fine. I deleted that 450MB recovery partition and made free space at the end of the SSD for the Windows 7 installation. I still have only 3 partitions - the 100MB boot partition, a system drive for Windows 10 and another system drive for Windows 10. Noting the limitation of 4 partitions for a MBR system, perhaps I could have left the 450MB recovery partition for Windows 10?

I initially had the Windows 7 text based multi-boot display but changed it within Windows 10 using this command for the UK locale bcdboot c:\Windows /l en-gb

The Windows 7 multi-boot menu does have the advantage that you boot directly to the selected OS rather than going through a full restart cycle using the Windows 10 boot menu. Why does the Windows 10 boot menu have this long winded behavior?