Adding win10 to PC to dual boot with Win7

I have a pc with win 7 already on it. If I make a partition and load Win10TP will I have a choice for dual boot. I
haven't done this for years if I've done it at all. I've always had to kludge something together. Does the OS know
from get go that there is another os and make it present a menu?

My win8 & Linux dual boots via windows menu not grub but I had to kinda force the issue, it didn't like linux but that I
can understand with MS.

Big_Al wrote:
I have a pc with win 7 already on it. If I make a partition and load
Win10TP will I have a choice for dual boot. I haven't done this for
years if I've done it at all. I've always had to kludge something
together. Does the OS know from get go that there is another os and
make it present a menu?

My win8 & Linux dual boots via windows menu not grub but I had to kinda
force the issue, it didn't like linux but that I can understand with MS.

The setup that I am using right now. On 1 harddrive I have Win8.1 dual
booting with Win 7 pro on 1 hd. On another drive I installed Win 10 and
had to changed boot sequence in bios to boot it. On that same I
installed Fedora 22 which found all the other OS on the computer so I
can boot all from the drive where win 10 resides. I also used grub
customizer to change the default OS that boots without My interaction.I
must say that Fedora seems to be where I am at most of the time.All
seems to work well.

Dino wrote on 7/8/2015 12:44 PM:
The setup that I am using right now. On 1 harddrive I have Win8.1 dual booting with Win 7 pro on 1 hd.
I think I'm satisfied now as to how this works, I did some more different googling and found a page that described
loading 8.1 beside 7 and after the initial boot and setup etc, the pc would reboot and you'd see the dual boot screen.
It's done automatically. That was the part of the equation I needed. So I'm going to assume that loading windows
10 on my 7 system will do the same thing and I'll get the dual boot automatically.

Thanks for kick starting my brain. .

Big_Al wrote:
I have a pc with win 7 already on it. If I make a partition and load
Win10TP will I have a choice for dual boot. I haven't done this for
years if I've done it at all. I've always had to kludge something
together. Does the OS know from get go that there is another os and
make it present a menu?

My win8 & Linux dual boots via windows menu not grub but I had to kinda
force the issue, it didn't like linux but that I can understand with MS.

The OSes are about equal in their treatment
of the topic of booting. No OS, by itself,
has completely universal boot management. There
are always going to be situations where some
bailing wire and binder twine will be needed.
(On UBuntu, the OS_Prober package needs to be
present, for Grub to detect Windows.)

Of course Win10 will take over boot management
from a Win7 installation. I'm dual booting
the Win10 TP right now (that's on my physical
hardware test setup). I have Win10 10074
installed first. Followed by pointing a later
install DVD at an NTFS partition on the disk, and
having that installation take over boot duties.
It all went off without a hitch.

You end up with a boot menu, with two icons in it.

Win10 TP 10162

Win10 TP 10074

When you're booted into the latest OS, like
Win10 10162 say, you can do this from an admin
Command Prompt.

bcdedit /set {current} description "Win10 TP 10162"

If I booted into 10074 (by clicking the lower icon),
I could again run the command, thus naming the
"current" OS as 10074.

bcdedit /set {current} description "Win10 TP 10074"

Without that, they might both be "Windows 10" and
then you cannot tell which is which. (That's why I had
to look up how to fix that :-) )

If you install Win10 TP now, chances are Win10 will be
at the top of the boot menu, Win7 will be below that.
You can use the System control panel, if you want to verify
what OS it is (approximately). Win10 TP will also have
information in the lower right corner. And you can use
that to craft a bcdedit command if you want. To better
label the dual-boot options.

If you need to preserve primary partitions, some planning
ahead of time is required. You can switch Windows 7 to
a single partition installation, move the boot flag to the
Windows 7 C: partition. (Doing this, would break a BitLocker
full disk encryption setup.) But I haven't tested how something
like Win10 TP handles that, if it sees it. I would not
expect trouble, but you may want to backup your setup
before doing anything else.

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/kb/article.php?id=409

Without that, my guess at the partition setup is:

System Reserved (0x80 boot flag)
Win7 C: partition
Win10 TP Recover Partition (450MB)
Win10 C: partition

After the Terabyteunlimited step, that should help
get rid of the System Reserved.

*******

I just did the whole sequence in a VM. And by defining
an empty NTFS before each OS installs, I got it down to just
two partitions. The Win10 didn't even attempt to resize the
Win10 partition it was given and make a Recovery Partition (450MB).
So it ended up taking just two partitions. Some sort of miracle.

Win7 C: partition (0x80 boot flag)
Win10 C: partition

OS desktop
http://i58.tinypic.com/ims4ti.png

Boot Manager
http://i60.tinypic.com/2mg6nw7.gif

Notice that the BCD and /Boot are in the
Windows 7 partition, judging by what I see in
Disk Management. I bet it would be loads of fun to
remove one of those two OSes later. A real challenge
for the "repair logic" in there :-)

Some other notes. Activation behavior changed. On my
existing "Insider" setup, the dual boot one, I was
not queried for a license key (none of them asked me).
Neither 10074 on the first partition, or 10162 on the
second partition, required typing in the key.

When I installed 10162 on the VM, it prompted for a license
key. I think it may be using the RTM logic now. It noticed
I had Windows 7 SP1 installed, noticed Windows 7 did not have
a license key, and decided I did not "qualify for a
free upgrade". By using this license key on the download
page, that was resolved.

8N67H-M3CY9-QT7C4-2TR7M-TXYCV

But when RTM comes out, this is going to be a problem. You
don't have a grace period for the license key.

WinXP, Vista, Win7 Grace period on key, just click next.
Good for at least 30 days.

Win8/Win8.1/Win10 Must enter key immediately.
Can use Install Only key. Keys are
available for Win8 and Win8.1. No keys
yet for Win10 RTM (obviously). And they
probably won't leak for a while.

HTH,
Paul

Dino wrote:
Big_Al wrote:
I have a pc with win 7 already on it. If I make a partition and load
Win10TP will I have a choice for dual boot. I haven't done this for
years if I've done it at all. I've always had to kludge something
together. Does the OS know from get go that there is another os and
make it present a menu?

My win8 & Linux dual boots via windows menu not grub but I had to kinda
force the issue, it didn't like linux but that I can understand with MS.

The setup that I am using right now. On 1 harddrive I have Win8.1 dual
booting with Win 7 pro on 1 hd. On another drive I installed Win 10 and
had to changed boot sequence in bios to boot it. On that same I
installed Fedora 22 which found all the other OS on the computer so I
can boot all from the drive where win 10 resides. I also used grub
customizer to change the default OS that boots without My interaction.I
must say that Fedora seems to be where I am at most of the time.All
seems to work well.

That's useful information. My situation is identical to that described
by the OP. What I'd like to do is to replicate my win7 boot partition
and upgrade the replica to win10 (full release) for evaluation purposes
(taking a week or two). Does anyone know, would that cause any licensing
problems? It's an OEM licence.

--
Mike Barnes
Cheshire, England

Mike Barnes wrote on 7/8/2015 6:42 PM:
Dino wrote:
Big_Al wrote:
I have a pc with win 7 already on it. If I make a partition and load
Win10TP will I have a choice for dual boot. I haven't done this for
years if I've done it at all. I've always had to kludge something
together. Does the OS know from get go that there is another os and
make it present a menu?

My win8 & Linux dual boots via windows menu not grub but I had to kinda
force the issue, it didn't like linux but that I can understand with MS.

The setup that I am using right now. On 1 harddrive I have Win8.1 dual
booting with Win 7 pro on 1 hd. On another drive I installed Win 10 and
had to changed boot sequence in bios to boot it. On that same I
installed Fedora 22 which found all the other OS on the computer so I
can boot all from the drive where win 10 resides. I also used grub
customizer to change the default OS that boots without My interaction.I
must say that Fedora seems to be where I am at most of the time.All
seems to work well.

That's useful information. My situation is identical to that described by the OP. What I'd like to do is to replicate my
win7 boot partition and upgrade the replica to win10 (full release) for evaluation purposes (taking a week or two). Does
anyone know, would that cause any licensing problems? It's an OEM licence.

I did a variation with the 7-8 upgrade. I imaged 7 then did the over the internet upgrade to 8 and then of course 8.1

I then shrank 8 and put the image of 7 back on the unallocated space.

I use EasyBCD to fix the boot to dual boot and ran both 7 and 8 for a long while before I realized I didn't need 7 any
more.