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Comment on my Laptop-Win10 dual boot strategy?

BonzaiDuck

BonzaiDuck

Lifer
So I've been wrestling with the Windows Update problem -- there's a solution to it if I follow one of our colleagues, or maybe there's hope that it will work. If it doesn't, I can continue to run up WSUSoffline once a month from the two shortcuts on my desktop.

Now I have two viable licenses for Win 7 on two different disks, and both should be upgrade-eligible.

I'm thinking -- whichever one has a successful clean installation -- I can keep that partition on the HDD. I can shrink the drive and make room for another partition, and possibly clone the image of the other win7 license to it. I should be able to have a single-drive, dual boot configuration.

These volumes should come from differently-signatur--ed disks. What else do I need to do in order to have a dual boot system at startup, or does Windows manage that properly without editing any boot.ini file?
 
Technically, you can install your win 7 that you are running now in multiple installs of the same machine, on the same (or different) disks. Since you can only run 1 OS version at a time, then, you don't have to use the other licenses. If those are retail licenses, then you can use those to reserve your update to win 10 as well (retail vs OEM), which means you can then move the retail license of win 10 to another machine.

Right now, when you install another copy of windows, it will take care of everything for you as far as the boot settings are concerned. No need to edit anything, except which is the "default" OS that you want to boot with.
 
Elixer said:
Technically, you can install your win 7 that you are running now in multiple installs of the same machine, on the same (or different) disks. Since you can only run 1 OS version at a time, then, you don't have to use the other licenses. If those are retail licenses, then you can use those to reserve your update to win 10 as well (retail vs OEM), which means you can then move the retail license of win 10 to another machine.

Right now, when you install another copy of windows, it will take care of everything for you as far as the boot settings are concerned. No need to edit anything, except which is the "default" OS that you want to boot with.
Click to expand...

And I'd have the option of choosing the OS1 or OS2 from the boot-menu F8 key? Or would it just raise a menu by itself? It's been a long time since I created a dual-boot system, but barring carelessness or some improbable mishap, Windows had always managed it fairly well.
 
It will show each OS, and I think the default is picked, and you got 3 secs to change it.
Win 10's bootloader is more fancy, but does the same thing, except you can use the mouse to pick the OS you want to boot into.

No need to hit F8 anymore.
 
JackMDS said:
https://discuss.howtogeek.com/t/how-to-dual-boot-windows-10-with-windows-7-or-8/19931



😎
Click to expand...

Yes .. . it was either "HowToGeek" or some similar page, but I got comfortable with it before doing it.

I guess I'm getting old with getting more cautious, or vice versa.

20+ years ago, I might have naively tried to just run the "upgrade" over an existing license, although I'm sure some have had good luck with that. But not only do I think I heard others ran into glitches: "Upgrade" solutions are a bridge-burning option that have a past history.

What I'm saying is that I should have jumped on this option when the tech-sites began posting "How To" and the optional possibilities -- which we might have deduced would be available. But Win 10 was "sold" as free upgrade to the crowd that doesn't want to fiddle with particulars -- so I missed it.

It looks now as though I can even add a bootable Win 10 to my HTPC-functioning desktop, and then cautiously experiment with the hack that had been provided so that WMC can run under Win 10.

I just have to make preparations to beat the deadline.

This is another "learning curve," since your first few hours with a Win 10 bootable partition/volume will send you scouring around to "find" things and put them where you think they should be. I'm not yet too worried about Cortana, but we'll see. I may even find myself using "One Drive."

I just need to get one driver installed for an SD-card storage controller, disable the uninstallable "docking station" storage controller, and . ..

. . . . .and . . . . take my own g**d*** time to "learn new stuff."
 
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