Win 7 and win 8 dual boot

[Banzai_Joe]

Hi all,

anyone got win7 on one ssd and win8 on another?
Just wondering how the bootstrap handles it?

Win7 is my main OS.

I'll shortly be:
1 disconnecting win7 drive
2. connect new drive
3. boot up
4. install win8
5. shutdown
6. reconnect win7 drive
7. Bootup
8. see what happens.

I'm expecting to see the bootstrap options of both OS's at startup, but it's been a while since i had a dual boot system.

Any thoughts please?

 

[troops]

Pretty sure i left win7 drive connected when i wanted my laptop to dual boot win7/win8 and win8 detected win7.
Now have select boot option win8 style.
Also i think you can do the route you say but wont have the dual boot feature, but the win8 install dvd can fix that.

 

[marc2003]

if you follow those steps (in the OP), the machine will simply boot to whichever drive has priority in the bios. depending on mobo, you can usually press a key during POST which will give a choice of drives to boot from.

to get a menu, run windows 8 setup from within the windows 7 desktop. do not run setup.exe in the root of the drive but rather the one that lives inside the \sources folder. just follow the steps. you'll now have a menu. just remember that windows 8 will rely on your windows 7 drive to boot - something you don't have to consider with the first method.

 

[Banzai_Joe]

Thanks so far fellas,
so, if i leave my win7 ssd in, reboot with the win8 dvd in and install onto the new drive then the bootstrap will show both OS's and present me with the option when i start the computer up.
Historically i've always just disconnected any existing drives when installing an os onto a new one, to avoid possible issues.