Windows Vista / 7 dual boot

1kiwi

1kiwi

1kiwi

Soldato
Joined
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Hi Guys,

I'm keen to try the latest version of W7 via a dual boot. I have only ever had a dual boot on the same drive. My question is, is it possible to run W7 on another harddrive? Don't quite have the space on my C:/ drive for another OS.

If so, how do you set it up?
 
Yea, just install it on that drive and it'll dual boot. If you have the Vista drive as your primary drive then it'll dual boot, allthough if you set the W7 drive as your primary drive then you'll find you have to switch between the drives to boot each OS, that's what I do for W7/XP but Vista/W7 I dual boot.
 
willhub said:
you have to switch between the drives to boot each OS, that's what I do for W7/XP but Vista/W7 I dual boot.
Click to expand...

Thanks m8. Not sure what you mean by the above statement? Basically what i want to do is be able to choose which OS i want to boot on startup and have it boot to vista by default.

What is the approx install size, was thinking about creating a 30GB partition which i figure should be OK for for all my base apps.
 
If you install Windows 7 on your second hard drive first, once it is all setup, if you reboot, see if you get the option to boot into either Windows Vista or Windows 7.

If not, it will most likely boot into Windows Vista. If it does, download EasyBCD and install it. Then launch the program and go to the "Add/Remove Entries" tab on the left hand side. Where it says "Manage Existing Entries", it should list Windows Vista. Underneath, it says "Add an Entry". Click on "Type" and select "Windows Vista/Longhorn" and then in the box, type Windows 7 and then select the appropriate drive that Windows 7 is installed on. Then click "Add Entry" and then "Save" at the top.

Next, go to the "Change Settings" tab. Under "Entry-Based Settings" select Windows 7 and make sure the correct drive is selected. I found that the selected drive was "C" for both Windows Vista and Windows 7. So, I just had to select the appropriate drive for Windows 7.

As said though, if after having installed Windows 7, it gives you the option to boot into either operating system, then what is listed above won't be necessary.
 
Last edited:
beh* said:
Thanks m8. Not sure what you mean by the above statement? Basically what i want to do is be able to choose which OS i want to boot on startup and have it boot to vista by default.

What is the approx install size, was thinking about creating a 30GB partition which i figure should be OK for for all my base apps.
Click to expand...

I'd create a 40gig minimum, I've got a 90gb partition for Windows 7 and out of that I've got 68gb free so the partition is using around 22GB.

What I meant by that is, in the Bios, or on some mobo's like mine you can press F8 on the BIOS Screen for a selection of drives to boot from, but in the Bios you can select the boot disk priority, the order of which your HDD's boot from.

In the HDD Boot Priority in Bios:

WDC320GB - Vista
WDC640GB - W7

Vista drive is on the top, that will boot first, if you leave that at the top and install W7 on the 640gig hard drive then I believe the boot file is all modified on the 320gb hard drive (vista), so that will allow you to dual boot, but if the 320gig hard drive was at the top, then you'd install W7 on it's own boot loader and if you wanted to go into Vista, or the other way around, you would have to change this list around.

Here:

HDP.jpg


It's simple really, just installing Windows 7 it should dual bootm if not do what Fire Wizard suggested.
 
I have a related question that hopefully someone can answer. I downloaded W7 about 2 months ago and assume that there has been another release / update since then. Assume that i can install my old version and then those updates will download via windows update? Does anyone know where i can re-download the beta? As the beta is closed now there is no longer a link here: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/beta-installation-instructions.aspx
 
It's not a case of just downloading updates via WU. It's a completely different build now, unfortunately you can no longer get it via Microsoft. You can either get it torrents/newsgroups etc or you could wait until 5th May when Microsoft officially release build 7100 (what most if not all the people on here are using) as an RC :)
 
Thanks Happy. Couple more questions:


  1. How did you get 7100?
  2. How will RC1 be made available to people like myself who have already downloaded a beta?
 
I downloaded 7100 X64 off a torrent site. The RC1 will be made publically available (via Microsoft's website, just like the beta was) to everyone on the 5th May or 30th April if you're a subscriber. As long as you have a beta key you'll be fine :)
 
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