Install windows 7 on a separate hard drive?

Hi - I'm currently running Win 8 on my C: drive and a Linux distro on my
D: drive.

I'm not having fun with the linux distro, so I wonder - can I reinstall
my Windows 7 Home Premium copy from an Upgrade DVD onto the D: drive
(wiping the linux distro, obviously) and dual boot 8 and 7?

Googling turns up the suggestion that the older OS needs to be
installed first - but it's not clear whether that applies if you're
installing to separate hard drives on the same machine.

Any advice please?

On 3/13/2013 12:59 PM, Peter Roe wrote:
Hi - I'm currently running Win 8 on my C: drive and a Linux distro on my
D: drive.

I'm not having fun with the linux distro, so I wonder - can I reinstall
my Windows 7 Home Premium copy from an Upgrade DVD onto the D: drive
(wiping the linux distro, obviously) and dual boot 8 and 7?

Googling turns up the suggestion that the older OS needs to be
installed first - but it's not clear whether that applies if you're
installing to separate hard drives on the same machine.

Any advice please?

Usually, you can, however, I'd remove/disconnect any other HDs before
you start. The install process is usually to first install without using
the key.

Generally, you should install the older windows version first, as the
newer version can detect the older version, and give you options that
would otherwise not be shown.

I'm not going to get into the step by steps, other than to caution that
the wrong choice often results in starting over. The usual web prowl
should produce some step by step descriptions of what needs to be done..

Peter Roe wrote:
Hi - I'm currently running Win 8 on my C: drive and a Linux distro on my
D: drive.

I'm not having fun with the linux distro, so I wonder - can I reinstall
my Windows 7 Home Premium copy from an Upgrade DVD onto the D: drive
(wiping the linux distro, obviously) and dual boot 8 and 7?

Googling turns up the suggestion that the older OS needs to be
installed first - but it's not clear whether that applies if you're
installing to separate hard drives on the same machine.

Any advice please?

You're saying you have two separate hard drives.

There are several ways to do the installation, but I'll cover just two.

1) Install Win8 on one hard drive.
Install Win7 on a second hard drive.
The two OSes have nothing to do with one another.
Use the BIOS popup boot menu, to select the disk to boot from.
(On my computer, this is F8. On my second computer it is F11.
On my laptop, the key to press is F12.)
BCDEDIT does not need to be used for this to work.

2) Install Win8 on one hard drive.
Install Win7 on a second hard drive.
Use the boot manager (BCD) on one Windows, to handle booting
into either OS. You can use BCDEDIT or the free EasyBCD.
The BIOS is set, to point to the hard drive where the boot
manager will be used. The BIOS popup boot is no longer used,
as Windows will put up its menu as your alternative solution.

The two installation procedures remain largely the same. (1) is a
subset of (2). In (2), you add the step of editing BCD information,
so that one boot manager, offers two menu entries.

I don't see a reason in principle, why you couldn't install Windows 7
and have it recognize Windows 8, and put a boot entry in the menu.
Both OSes are from the same generation, and I presume one OS installation
can see a "peer" OS is present. And then, do the right thing.

I can give you an example, where this idea didn't work out.
By accident, I installed Win2K twice on the same disk drive.
The second installation was placed in a logical partition,
rather than a primary partition. So the installer did something
really crazy. I never trust *any* installer, to see and
respect another OS, and do all the right things.

As a consequence of many bad experiences of this type (results
not what I expected), I'll offer this advice to you.

1) Unplug the Windows 8 hard drive.
2) Leave the Linux hard drive plugged in (i.e. only the install
target should be connected to the system, to prevent "accidents").

Install Windows 7.
Verify it boots.
3) Now, you decide whether you want BIOS managed booting
or Windows managed booting. If you still want Windows
managed booting, then grab a copy of EasyBCD while the
Windows 7 OS is booted, install it, and tell it to "add"
Windows 8 to your Windows 7 boot menu. Then, you'll have
two OS entries in there to choose from.

The purpose of unplugging the Windows 8 disk, is so
nothing happens to it by accident. I've had many
hilarious results from using installers, that I don't
really want to repeat now, and unplugging all the disks
other than the target disk, is what works for me. YMMV.
Maybe you're a rocket scientist, and keep all the
relevant factors at bay for example. Unplugging
non-related drives for me is just... safer.

Here's a ref to EasyBCD from Neosmart. I used this a few
years ago, and it worked fine.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EasyBCD

And if Windows 7 gives you a hard time (pukes when it sees
Linux MBR), plug the Windows 8 drive in again, boot up, and
have the Windows 8 OS prep that Linux drive first. Using
"diskpart", you should be able to "clean" the drive.
Secure erase would be overkill (clean all). Apparently
"clean" just erases the MBR.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials...t-command.html

You can erase an MBR like this if you need to, but nobody
likes my "dd" ported software examples :-) This writes to
a single sector, on the first disk as listed in Disk Management.
( http://www.chrysocome.net/dd ) Naturally, you have to
be very careful to identify the correct disk drive.

dd if=/dev/zero of=\\?\Device\Harddisk0\Partition0 bs=512 count=1

And if you erased the wrong disk MBR by accident, you can put it
back in two steps. Use TestDisk to rebuild the MBR. Use "fixmbr"
or equivalent, to put back the boot code. Windows 7 and Windows 8
have a different tool to do the fixmbr operation. TestDisk can't
put back the missing 440 bytes of code by itself. So you can
repair a blown MBR, using

1) Linux LiveCD with TestDisk.
2) Windows installer CD/DVD with fixmbr, bootrec or whatever.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_boot_record

HTH,
Paul

"Peter Roe" wrote in message o.uk...


Hi - I'm currently running Win 8 on my C: drive and a Linux distro on my
D: drive.

I'm not having fun with the linux distro, so I wonder - can I reinstall
my Windows 7 Home Premium copy from an Upgrade DVD onto the D: drive
(wiping the linux distro, obviously) and dual boot 8 and 7?

Googling turns up the suggestion that the older OS needs to be
installed first - but it's not clear whether that applies if you're
installing to separate hard drives on the same machine.

Any advice please?

Was the Win7 Home Premium used as the qualifying o/s for upgrading to Windows 8 ?

Installing Windows 7 on the same disk/different partition or a different disk/partition (when both disks are connected) may render
Windows 8 unbootable since installing Win7 will write to the same System partition that Windows wrote it's boot files/manager and
as a result since installed after Windows 8 not necessarily setup a dual boot menu thereby necessitating a repair install of
Windows 8 (which should setup a dual boot menu but with Win8's unique graphical GUI dual boot menu)

--
....winston
msft mvp consumer apps

On 14/03/2013 05:07, ...winston wrote:

"Peter Roe" wrote in message
o.uk...


Hi - I'm currently running Win 8 on my C: drive and a Linux distro on my
D: drive.

I'm not having fun with the linux distro, so I wonder - can I reinstall
my Windows 7 Home Premium copy from an Upgrade DVD onto the D: drive
(wiping the linux distro, obviously) and dual boot 8 and 7?

Googling turns up the suggestion that the older OS needs to be
installed first - but it's not clear whether that applies if you're
installing to separate hard drives on the same machine.

Any advice please?

Was the Win7 Home Premium used as the qualifying o/s for upgrading to
Windows 8 ?

Installing Windows 7 on the same disk/different partition or a different
disk/partition (when both disks are connected) may render Windows 8
unbootable since installing Win7 will write to the same System partition
that Windows wrote it's boot files/manager and as a result since
installed after Windows 8 not necessarily setup a dual boot menu thereby
necessitating a repair install of Windows 8 (which should setup a dual
boot menu but with Win8's unique graphical GUI dual boot menu)

Thanks for all the info. An extra complication is that my win 7 pro was
an upgrade, so if I disconnect my win 8 drive, presumably win 7 won't
see a previous windows and won't install?

Is there a way to fool it? ISTR years ago copying a win.exe (?) file
from an old floppy to use an upgrade dvd...

On 03/14/2013 03:20 AM, Peter wrote:
On 14/03/2013 05:07, ...winston wrote:

"Peter Roe" wrote in message
o.uk...


Hi - I'm currently running Win 8 on my C: drive and a Linux distro on my
D: drive.


(Just a technicality, but you have no D: drive. Linux does not use drive
letters and Windows would not assign a letter to it)

I'm not having fun with the linux distro, so I wonder - can I reinstall
my Windows 7 Home Premium copy from an Upgrade DVD onto the D: drive
(wiping the linux distro, obviously) and dual boot 8 and 7?

Googling turns up the suggestion that the older OS needs to be
installed first - but it's not clear whether that applies if you're
installing to separate hard drives on the same machine.

Any advice please?

Was the Win7 Home Premium used as the qualifying o/s for upgrading to
Windows 8 ?

Installing Windows 7 on the same disk/different partition or a different
disk/partition (when both disks are connected) may render Windows 8
unbootable since installing Win7 will write to the same System partition
that Windows wrote it's boot files/manager and as a result since
installed after Windows 8 not necessarily setup a dual boot menu thereby
necessitating a repair install of Windows 8 (which should setup a dual
boot menu but with Win8's unique graphical GUI dual boot menu)

Thanks for all the info. An extra complication is that my win 7 pro was
an upgrade, so if I disconnect my win 8 drive, presumably win 7 won't
see a previous windows and won't install?

Is there a way to fool it? ISTR years ago copying a win.exe (?) file
from an old floppy to use an upgrade dvd...



Moot point. A Win7 upgrade will look for a *previous* version viz:
Vista or XP. Win8 is not a previous version.

That said, there is no sense that I can see in running both Win7 and Win8.

Other than the Metro interface being added Win8 is virtually identical
to Win7. If you don't like Metro, there are quite a few 3rd part apps
that allow you to have an interface similar to Win7. One example he

http://www.classicshell.net/


Additionally, Win8 if anything handles resources a little better than
Win7 so I'd just stick with Win8...forget about the hassle of going back
to Win7 and either get used to Linux on your other drive, or format it
and use it to store data.
(Use disk management to do so)


BTW: If you dump Linux & are using GRUB and want to get rid of it, you
should be able to boot with your Win8 DVD and perform a boot-loader repair.

--
https://www.createspace.com/3707686

Peter wrote:

Thanks for all the info. An extra complication is that my win 7 pro was
an upgrade, so if I disconnect my win 8 drive, presumably win 7 won't
see a previous windows and won't install?

Is there a way to fool it? ISTR years ago copying a win.exe (?) file
from an old floppy to use an upgrade dvd...

Try the double install method.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials...7-version.html

There is even a version of that tutorial for Windows 8,
which I used to install the $39.95 Windows 8 Upgrade, to
a blank disk. The difference is, Windows 8 has a "reset this PC"
option, which functions as the second installation try, and
it activates on that second try. As a consequence, my Windows 8
had "no qualifying OS". Or rather, it had Windows 8 as the
qualifying OS for Windows 8.

Paul

On Thu, 14 Mar 2013 03:58:36 -0500, "philo*" wrote
in article ...

On 03/14/2013 03:20 AM, Peter wrote:
On 14/03/2013 05:07, ...winston wrote:

"Peter Roe" wrote in message
o.uk...


Hi - I'm currently running Win 8 on my C: drive and a Linux distro on my
D: drive.


(Just a technicality, but you have no D: drive. Linux does not use drive
letters and Windows would not assign a letter to it)


Unless of course Linux was installed on a file system that Windows
understands like FAT32 (which is not uncommon so Windows can access
files from the Linux side), in which case Windows would assign a drive
letter.

--
Zaphod

"So [Trillian], two heads is what does it for a girl?"
"...Anything else [Zaphod]'s got two of?"
- Arthur Dent

On 03/14/2013 08:33 AM, Zaphod Beeblebrox wrote:
On Thu, 14 Mar 2013 03:58:36 -0500, "philo " wrote
in article ...

On 03/14/2013 03:20 AM, Peter wrote:
On 14/03/2013 05:07, ...winston wrote:

"Peter Roe" wrote in message
o.uk...


Hi - I'm currently running Win 8 on my C: drive and a Linux distro on my
D: drive.


(Just a technicality, but you have no D: drive. Linux does not use drive
letters and Windows would not assign a letter to it)


Unless of course Linux was installed on a file system that Windows
understands like FAT32 (which is not uncommon so Windows can access
files from the Linux side), in which case Windows would assign a drive
letter.



Though there *may* be some distributions that can be installed on Fat32,
it's not too likely the OP did that...pretty much everything out there
(other than a WUBI install or a USB stick) will default to ext3 or 4

--
https://www.createspace.com/3707686

On Thu, 14 Mar 2013 08:46:15 -0500, "philo*" wrote
in article ...

On 03/14/2013 08:33 AM, Zaphod Beeblebrox wrote:
On Thu, 14 Mar 2013 03:58:36 -0500, "philo " wrote
in article ...

On 03/14/2013 03:20 AM, Peter wrote:
On 14/03/2013 05:07, ...winston wrote:

"Peter Roe" wrote in message
o.uk...


Hi - I'm currently running Win 8 on my C: drive and a Linux distro on my
D: drive.


(Just a technicality, but you have no D: drive. Linux does not use drive
letters and Windows would not assign a letter to it)


Unless of course Linux was installed on a file system that Windows
understands like FAT32 (which is not uncommon so Windows can access
files from the Linux side), in which case Windows would assign a drive
letter.



Though there *may* be some distributions that can be installed on Fat32,

I wasn't aware that there were Linux distros that were restricted in
the choice of file systems they would install on. Odd, why in the
world would they do that?

it's not too likely the OP did that...pretty much everything out there
(other than a WUBI install or a USB stick) will default to ext3 or 4

True, but I don't always follow the defaults when I install something,
do you? Especially if I am trying out a new OS and want to easily
transfer files between them. I can't be the only person who does that
- I mean sure, if you are only installing Linux you would probably want
to use a better FS, but when running multiples on the same system FS
compatibility is something I'd expect most folks to care about. But
perhaps I'm wrong...

--
Zaphod

Adventurer, ex-hippie, good-timer (crook? quite possibly),
manic self-publicist, terrible bad at personal relationships,
often thought to be completely out to lunch.

You should not post Win7 issues on a Win8 Newsgroup.

Use: alt.windows7.general


--
=========== Tecknomage ===========
Computer Systems Specialist
IT Technician
(retired)
San Diego, CA

On 3/14/2013 4:11 PM, Tecknomage wrote:
You should not post Win7 issues on a Win8 Newsgroup.

Use: alt.windows7.general



He's talking about both and this is not a moderated newsgroup.

--
Alias

On 03/14/2013 09:33 AM, Zaphod Beeblebrox wrote:


snip

Unless of course Linux was installed on a file system that Windows
understands like FAT32 (which is not uncommon so Windows can access
files from the Linux side), in which case Windows would assign a drive
letter.



Though there *may* be some distributions that can be installed on Fat32,

I wasn't aware that there were Linux distros that were restricted in
the choice of file systems they would install on. Odd, why in the
world would they do that?

Pretty much for the same reason you could not install XP (for example)
on an ext3 partition.

The way fault-tolerance and attributes are handled is the reason
operating systems have their own native filing systems.

For the special cases where Linux can be installed on Fat32...
journaling would not be enabled, nor would the specialized Linux
attributes be assignable.

With the vast majority of Linux distributions, though you may get a
choice of file systems you install to..
the choices are generally ext2 , 3 or 4

Some may have a BTRfs or rfs option as well


it's not too likely the OP did that...pretty much everything out there
(other than a WUBI install or a USB stick) will default to ext3 or 4

True, but I don't always follow the defaults when I install something,
do you? Especially if I am trying out a new OS and want to easily
transfer files between them. I can't be the only person who does that
- I mean sure, if you are only installing Linux you would probably want
to use a better FS, but when running multiples on the same system FS
compatibility is something I'd expect most folks to care about. But
perhaps I'm wrong...


I am not aware of any major Linux distributions where you even get a
choice to install on Fat32

Linux is one of the most versatile operating systems as far as file
system choice. Just for example, with Win7 and 8 there is no option
other than NTFS

--
https://www.createspace.com/3707686

On 14/03/2013 13:33, Zaphod Beeblebrox wrote:
On Thu, 14 Mar 2013 03:58:36 -0500, "philo " wrote
in article ...

On 03/14/2013 03:20 AM, Peter wrote:
On 14/03/2013 05:07, ...winston wrote:

"Peter Roe" wrote in message
o.uk...


Hi - I'm currently running Win 8 on my C: drive and a Linux distro on my
D: drive.


(Just a technicality, but you have no D: drive. Linux does not use drive
letters and Windows would not assign a letter to it)


Unless of course Linux was installed on a file system that Windows
understands like FAT32 (which is not uncommon so Windows can access
files from the Linux side), in which case Windows would assign a drive
letter.

What I actually did was to install linux on three ext3 partitions (home,
data and swap); and kept a fourth partition as FAT32 for stuff I wanted
to bounce backwards and forwards (mainly documents and scans).

These were all partitions on what I (incorrectly) called my D: drive.

Sadly, LibreOffice isn't terribly good at mimicking MS Office, which I
have to use a lot - so my linux experiment was doomed.

However - I recently found Vuescan which sprang my scanner into action
under Win 8 and solved the main reason I tried another OS. So I've taken
advice here, reformatted the linux drive as extra storage and stuck with
Win8 and Classic Shell.

So now I DO have a D: drive :-)

My apologies to Tecknomage if I should have posted this in alts.
libreoffice, msoffice or linux. And my grateful thanks for the more
constructive advice I received. A good NG, this.

Peter has written on 3/14/2013 1:06 PM:
Sadly, LibreOffice isn't terribly good at mimicking MS Office, which I
have to use a lot - so my linux experiment was doomed.

Where did LO let you down?