Uncategories How to Dual Boot Windows 8 with Windows 7 ???

How to Dual Boot Windows 8 with Windows 7 ???

How to Dual Boot Windows 8 with Windows 7
 
Your newly purchased computer or the one you just built has Windows 8 installed. You now want to install Windows 7 as a second operating system thus creating a Dual Boot computer and giving you the best of both worlds and full app compatibility as some of your Windows 7 applications may not be supported in a Windows 8 environment.
 
Considerations before you start:
A) If you purchased your Windows 8 computer:
1 - Installing Windows 7 may void your warrantee. Call the PC manufacture and ask !!!
2 - Installing Windows 7 may render your Windows 8 “Recovery Partition” useless. Before you start, contact the PC manufacture and obtain the “Recovery media” for Windows 8. Also ask the manufacture’s support team about activation when using recovery media as your new computer may no longer have a product key code sticker, Windows 8 uses a BIOS imbedded product key for activation.
 
Partition arrangements on a computer purchased with Windows 8 may vary from manufacture to manufacture. For example a Dell computer could typically have a large number of predefined partitions:
 
EFI System Partition - 500 MB
OEM Partition - 40 MB
Recovery Partition - 500 MB
Recovery Partition - 10.63 GB
Boot, Page File, Crash Dump, Primary Partition 919.74 (Windows 8 OS C:)
 
New computers come with a feature called “Secure Boot”. You may need to temporarily disable secure boot in the BIOS before you can install Windows 7. Check your owner’s manual or contact your PC manufacture’s support team for help on how to do this.
 
3 - Are there Windows 7 device drivers for your computer’s make and model available from the manufacture’s driver support download web site? If there are no Windows 7 device drivers then installing Windows 7 may be a waste of time as your Display, Touch pad, Camera, USB and other devices may not function properly.
 
B) If you have built your own computer:
1) Verify there Windows 7 device drivers for your motherboard’s make and model available from the manufacture’s driver support download site. There is a good chance there are Windows 7 drivers and in fact less of a chance there are a full set Windows 8 drivers for older motherboards. More recently released boards will support XP, Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8. The assumption however is that you already have Windows 8 installed as your first operating system on the disk drive.
 
Conceptual overview:
1) This article is based on a home built computer using a 1TB hard drive.
2) The free version of EaseUS Todo Backup will be used to create an image backup of the drive to an external USB drive before starting. Todo supports both Windows 7 and Windows 8.
3) You need to shrink the Windows 8 partition to make room for a Windows 7 partition. For this task you will use Windows 8’s ‘Disk Management’. To access Disk Management, open the ‘Desktop’ and press the Windows key + X, then select ‘Disk Management’.
4) You will need to disable Windows 8’s ‘Fast Startup’ option before you install Windows 7.
Why disable ‘Fast Startup’:
Failure to disable the fast startup option can result in ‘Check Disk’ (chkdsk) running when installing Windows 7. You may also no longer see the dual boot menu the next time you turn on your computer. Also if you have more than 1 disk drive chkdsk will run each time you shut down from within Windows 8 and then boot to Windows 7.
 
Fast Startup in Windows 8 is designed to close and reopen by fast booting (Hybrid Boot), it has left your system in a partially hibernated state, with the drive mounted and according to Microsoft "effectively saving the system state and memory contents to a file on disk (hiberfil.sys) and then reading that back in on resume and restoring contents back to memory."
 
Turning off the “fast startup/hybrid boot” option fixes the chkdsk problem during the installation of Windows 7, the missing boot menu problem (more on this later) and the multiple disk drives “Dirty bit” issue when booting to Windows 7.Windows 8 may take little longer to boot but not all that much as to be meaningful. Boot times for Windows 7 are unaffected and the boot menu will be displayed each time you turn on or reboot the computer.
 
How to disable ‘Fast Boot’:
Make the following changes to the Windows 8 Power Options.
1. Control Panel --> View by: Small Icons -->Power Options
2. Select "Choose what the power button does" on left hand side.
3. Click on "Change settings that are currently unavailable".
4. Uncheck "Turn on fast startup" under shutdown settings.
5. Click on the ‘Save changes’ button.

Create an Image Backup:
Before you make any changes to your Windows 8 computer, create an image backup. Its your safety net should something go wrong. I used the free version of EaseUS’s Todo Backup and an external USB drive to store the image file.
EaseUS Todo Backup: http://www.todo-backup.com/products/home/free-backup-software.htm
 
Note: The Image should include “All” partitions on your disk drive. Therefore use the Disk and Partition backup option and not the ‘System Backup’ option. Click on the left edge of the image of the disk’s partition map to select the entire drive (this will highlight the entire drive in a golden box. Change the destination to your USB drive. Note: You can create a unique destination and folder name for each backup you create by clicking on the File Explore (formerly called “Windows Explorer”).
 
Using Disk Management to create a partition for Windows 7:
1) Open Windows 8’s ‘Disk Management’ (press and hold the ‘Windows’ key and tap the X key). Then select the ‘Disk Management’ (or tap the ‘K’ key) option from the list.

2) Change the ‘Volume name’ to “Windows 8 Pro” (Without the quotes). Right click on the Windows 8 partition (C:) and select ‘Properties’. In the ‘General’ tab change the existing name to: Windows 8 Pro and click the ‘Apply’ button.

3) Shrink the Windows 8 partition to create unallocated space for use when installing Windows 7. Right click on the Windows 8 partition (C:) and select the ‘Shrink Volume’ option. Now enter a value for the amount of space to shrink in MB. For the 931GB partition in this example I wanted to create a 460GB partition for Windows 7, so I entered a value of 471040 (460 X 1024). If your Windows 8 partition contains a lot of data you want to consider a smaller partition size for Windows 7 (75 to 100GB).

Click the ‘Shrink’ button to start the process. After the shrink operation has completed you will see 460.00GB in “Unallocated” space.

4) Create a “Primary” partition and format it. Right click on the unallocated space and select ‘New Simple Volume’.

In the “Format Partition” window you want an ‘NTFS’ partition, leave the allocation unit size set to ‘Default’ and either choose a ‘Quick’ or ‘Full’ format. I prefer a full format (takes longer to complete, but it’s safer) so as the screenshot below shows, the ‘Perform a quick format’ option is unchecked. Click ‘Next’ to continue.

5) Change the volume name to Windows 7 (or Windows 7 Pro or Windows 7 Ult if Home Premium is not what you are installing). This will make it easy for you to select the proper location on the drive during the Windows 7 installation process.



6) At this point I created another Image Backup of the drive (all partitions) using Todo Backup. This allows me or you to return to the current state should Windows 7 fail to install properly the first time around.
 
7) You are now ready to install Windows 7. This will be a “Keyless” install, should anything go wrong your Windows 7 product key will not have been used or activated and you can try again.
 
For reference purposes a “Keyless” install simply means you will skip entering in a product key during the install and activate Windows 7 at a later point in time. More on this subject later.
 
I’m not going to show you screenshots for each step in the installation of Windows 7 as this has been documented many times.
 
What I will provide is the basic information and screenshots at key points in the installation process that you will need to know and follow.
 
Installing Windows 7:
 
Step 1 - Insert the Windows 7 installation DVD into your DVD drive and restart the computer. When you see the prompt to ‘Press any key” to boot from the DVD, do so. Windows 7 will start to boot up and you will see the following progress bar “Windows Is Loading Files” followed by the “Starting Windows” logo.
 
Step 2 - The next screen allows you to setup your language, time and currency format, keyboard or input method. Choose your required settings and click next to continue.
 
Step 3 - The next screen allows you to install or repair Windows 7. Since we are doing a clean install, click on "install now". The ‘Setup’ process will then start.

Step 4 - Read the license terms and click ‘I accept the license terms’. Then click ‘Next’ to continue.
 
Step 5: What type of Installation do you want: There are two options to choose from, Upgrade or Custom (Advanced). Since you are doing a clean install, select the second option ‘Custom (Advanced)’.
 
Step 6: Choose where you would like to install Windows 7. Since the drive already has been partitioned, formatted and assigned a volume name (Windows 7 Pro), all you need to do is select the third / Windows 7 Pro partition (since that’s what I’m installing) and click ‘Next’.

Step 7 - Windows 7 starts the installation process and begins by copying and expanding all the necessary files to your hard drive or SSD.
 
Step 8 - The installation will go through various setup stages and then will reboot your system.
Warning: Each time your computer reboots it will prompt you to boot from the DVD. Take no action on your part, please do not touch that keyboard, even though you are prompted to “press any key to boot from CD or DVD” just let the computer boot on its own and the installation will automatically continue.
 
Step 9: The next set of tasks are completely automated and no user intervention is required. You will see a starting Windows logo.
 
Note: If you failed to Disable Windows 8’s ‘Fast Start’ option, ‘chkdsk’ may run immediately after a reboot, check each partition on your drive and then reboot again to continue the installation.
 
At this point “Setup is updating registry settings” message quickly followed by a “Setup starting services” message, finally the “Completing installation” message is displayed (your display may flicker). Your computer will then reboot at this point in the installation process.
 
Setup will now prepare your computer for first use and check your video performance.
 
10) You will now be prompted to enter a user name and a computer name. Your username will be will become the prefix for the computer name. Click the ‘Next’ button to continue.
 
11) Set a password for your account:  Choose your password and password hint just in case you forget the password and need to jog your memory.
 
12) This step is where you perform a “Keyless Install”. 
You could at this point enter the product key that came with the version of Windows 7 you are installing and then click ‘Next’. But wait, if you choose to activate Windows now and something should go wrong anywhere in the process of installing Windows, installing the device drivers or installing the latest Windows Updates and as a result forcing you to start fresh by reinstalling Windows from scratch, the next time you try to activate it will most likely fail and phone activation will be required; not a good idea, especially if there is a better way.
 
Keyless Install:
If you do not enter the product key and remove the checkmark from the “Automatically activate Windows when I'm online” box, you can still proceed with the installation process without entering your product key. After the installation has completed, Windows 7 will run in a trial mode for 30 days, this should be more than enough time to install the device drivers, all the Windows Updates, configure and test your dual boot computer before you need to activate Windows.

13) Help protect your computer and improve Windows automatically: 
Choose ‘Ask me later’, there is no need to be flooded with Windows Updates after the installation has completed.
 
14) Set the ‘Time zone’, Date and Time for your location. Note: Because you have performed a “Keyless Install” it is very important that you set the Time zone, Date and Time correctly.
Then click ‘Next’.
 
Note: Changing these settings after the install has completed could result in instantly using up your 30 day grace period.
 
15) Select your computer's current location: Home users should choose ‘Home network’ option, otherwise pick one of the appropriate remaining two options. Windows will now connect to your network and apply the settings.
 
16) Select what you want to share if a network is detected and enter a password or simply click ‘Skip’.
 
17) Windows will finalized your settings, prepare your desktop and finally display the Windows 7 style desktop with a “Real” start button in the lower left corner of the ‘Taskbar.
 
18) The bland grayish color of the toolbar (Non Aero) is a dead giveaway that the graphics card driver has not been installed. Other device drivers will also need to be installed.
 
19) Remove the Windows 7 installation DVD and reboot to Windows 8 and create another backup before installing any Windows 7 device drivers. You will note the boot menu now takes on the look of a typical Windows 7 dual boot display with Windows 7 at the top of the list and it is also the ‘Default’ OS that will load if no choice is made before the 30 second timeout.
 
Use the ‘Down’ arrow on the keyboard to select Windows 8 and press the ‘Enter’ key.

20) Reboot to Windows 7 and install your device drivers.

Missing Boot Menu:
You may notice that on powering down from Windows 8 (not Windows 7) and then booting the computer later in the day or the next morning that the boot menu is missing and the PC boots straight to Windows 8.This is caused because you forgot to disable the ‘Fast boot’ option prior to installing Windows 7.
 
To fix this issue make the following changes to the Windows 8 Power Options.
1. Control Panel --> View by: Small Icons -->Power Options
2. Select "Choose what the power button does" on left hand side.
3. Click on "Change settings that are currently unavailable".
4. Uncheck "Turn on fast startup" under shutdown settings.
5. Click on the ‘Save changes’ button.Install the Windows 7 device drivers:
Go to your computer or motherboard manufacture's support web site and check for Windows 7 drivers for your specific model number.
 
If there are Windows 7 drivers, then download to a folder on your hard drive and install all of them, starting with the Motherboard/chipset drivers, SATA, LAN, Audio, USB, Graphics, Webcam, Etc., and so on.
 
 
If you have an Intel motherboard you can try the Intel Driver Update Utility: http://www.intel.com/support/detect.htm?iid=dc_iduu
 
 
 
Graphics/Video drivers:Check the Graphics card manufacture's download site for the most recent Windows 7 drivers for your card.
 
 
21) Once you are satisfied everything is as it should be and there are no issues after installing Windows 7 and the device drivers on your Windows 8 based computer create another Image Backup.
 
By now you have noticed that I create a fresh image backup at the completion of each major juncture in the process of creating a dual boot computer. Frequent backups allow you to conveniently roll back to a last known good state thus eliminating to need to start the whole process from scratch.
 
22) Activating Windows 7: Once you are satisfied everything is as it should be and there are no issues then activate Windows 7. Play it safe and only use a maximum of 29 days from the date of installing Windows 7 as a guideline for the activation deadline, don’t wait for the last day to activate Windows.
 
23) After Windows has been activated, make another image backup. This backup is your Dual Boot baseline.
 
Verify you can boot to either version of Windows using either the reboot option or from a cold start. Open “File Explorer” in Windows 8 then open “Windows Explorer” in Windows 7; here is what you can expect to see:


That’s it, your finished !