[SOLVED] Dual-booting with Windows 10?

Dec 21, 2020
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For the past couple of days, I've been trying to install Windows 7 alongside Windows 10 on my computer, with limited success. The first thing I tried was partitioning my 2TB secondary drive (mostly for games and general downloads) and installing it on that. I made a bootable USB drive, but then it just got stuck on "Starting Windows" every time. I then tried to format just the partition for whatever reason (I was desperate for some kind of solution), which ended with me losing over 700GB of data, and while it's sad, it's beside the point.

I ended up installing a third hard drive in my computer since I assumed that would work better. I took a different approach this time--I mounted the ISO, opened setup.exe, and tried to pick the drive to install it on (which by this point is already formatted and ready to go). When I selected the drive, it said: "Windows cannot be installed to this disk. This computer's hardware may not support booting to this disk. Ensure that this disk's controller is enabled in the computer's BIOS menu."

If there is a solution I'm missing that someone can inform me of, that would be fantastic. And, just in case it matters, here are my specs:
MSI MPG Z390M Gaming Edge AC
GeForce RTX 2070
16GB DDR4-3600
Intel Core i7-9700K (overclocked to 4.2GHz)
Crucial P1 500GB SSD (boot drive)
Seagate Barracuda Compute 2TB HDD (the one I wiped on accident, very sad)
WD Black 1TB HDD (the newly installed one)
Corsair TX850M
 
Solution
Windows 7 will not install at all on a new system, MS has stopped support for that, even if you install it will keep nagging you that you run unsupported hardware until you patch that out with a third party tool..

To install it you will have to use a VM and give it access to the whole HDD you want it installed to, it will install very basic drivers that will work on real hardware as well
or you prepare a drive and use imagex to uncompress the installation .wim file from the boot media. Search for imagex OS install you you will get tons of tutorials.

As said above, drivers are going to be a mayor problem.

this is not accurate, you do have to do some work but it can be installed and run fine on new hardware. this little tool...

Colif

Win 11 Master
Moderator
if you want to dual boot win 7 & 10, it helps to start from win 7 and then install win 10 afterwards. If you try it in other order, win 7 will take one look at the boot partition and delete it, and replace win 10 with itself meaning you can't boot win 10.
If you put win 7 on 1st, win 10 will recognise win 7 and add itself to the boot partition

Win 7 can't boot off USB on your PC as you don't have any USB 2 slots on external connectors, only internally. Win 7 doesn't know what USB 3 is without drivers.

is win 7 64bit?

if its not it probably won't know recognise the boot partition at all and make its own. It needs MBR, Win 10 defaults to GPT. Win 7 32bit can't boot off GPT. win 7 recognises GPT but only for storage unless its 64bit.

I doubt you can install Win 7 using an ISO like that, as it needs to do restarts and that will lead to fail

your motherboard doesn't have any win 7 drivers.
https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/support/MPG-Z390M-GAMING-EDGE-AC#down-bios

that is going to make installing win 7 difficult.
 
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Windows 7 will not install at all on a new system, MS has stopped support for that, even if you install it will keep nagging you that you run unsupported hardware until you patch that out with a third party tool..

To install it you will have to use a VM and give it access to the whole HDD you want it installed to, it will install very basic drivers that will work on real hardware as well
or you prepare a drive and use imagex to uncompress the installation .wim file from the boot media. Search for imagex OS install you you will get tons of tutorials.

As said above, drivers are going to be a mayor problem.
 

Math Geek

Titan
Ambassador
Windows 7 will not install at all on a new system, MS has stopped support for that, even if you install it will keep nagging you that you run unsupported hardware until you patch that out with a third party tool..

To install it you will have to use a VM and give it access to the whole HDD you want it installed to, it will install very basic drivers that will work on real hardware as well
or you prepare a drive and use imagex to uncompress the installation .wim file from the boot media. Search for imagex OS install you you will get tons of tutorials.

As said above, drivers are going to be a mayor problem.

this is not accurate, you do have to do some work but it can be installed and run fine on new hardware. this little tool will update your win 7 iso to make it install no problem.

Windows 7 Image Updater - SkyLake\KabyLake\CoffeLake\Ryzen Threadripper - VideoHelp Forum

and this removes the windows update block.

Release wufuc v1.0.1.201 · zeffy/wufuc · GitHub

then as Colif noted, installing win 7 FIRST is the way to avoid all the issues. start with the oldest OS to prevent the issues you are seeing. i've tried many times to start with win 10 and think i only had it work one time. it's far quicker and easier to start fresh and with win 7 and then add win 10.

but if you are unwilling to start fresh with win 10, then use that third drive to install win 7 completely separate from your win 10 install. remove every drive but the new one and get win 7 running on it. then put the others back and use the boot menu to select the drive to start. F8 is the key to press to get that boot menu on start-up. this is not a true dual boot since you don't get the little selector menu but it's not any harder to press F8 and then select the drive than it is to see the menu and select OS to boot.

getting win 7 installed does not mean you'll have al the drivers for the mobo. you can usually find the feature drivers but the chipset drivers do not exist for win 7 so you may have to deal with them missing. normally everything still works but there can be glitches caused by the missing drivers depending on the board. i've seen it work great and have issues as well. all depends on the total system.
 
Solution

Colif

Win 11 Master
Moderator
F8. question - how do you add win 7 to the win 10 boot order so that it knows that both exist. If you use the F8 it will see the WIn 7 boot partition but 10 isn't included in that. even if win 7 is 64 bit, it won't see the other EFI if you install 7 without 1o attached?
 

Math Geek

Titan
Ambassador
Yeah you have to hack it because it's not officially supported anymore.

again not accurate. you do need to update it to include drivers for the new hardware (hence the updater tool i linked to), but this is not hacking it. no more than it is hacking win 10 to install custom driver packages in that iso.

not supported does not mean somehow it just stops working. i use win 7 as my daily OS on my Ryzen systems no problem. i still get updates regularly despite all the misinformation out there people keep passing on.
 
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Math Geek

Titan
Ambassador
F8. question - how do you add win 7 to the win 10 boot order so that it knows that both exist. If you use the F8 it will see the WIn 7 boot partition but 10 isn't included in that. even if win 7 is 64 bit, it won't see the other EFI if you install 7 without 1o attached?

it's not adding it really. it's the same as using F8 to select the DVD drive or USB stick if it is not first in the order. it'll have both hdd's listed and you select the one you want. you set the order in the BIOS to get the "default" OS and over-ride it with F8 to get to the other one. they don't really know the other is there. but you can access each drive from the other OS. and any data drive is accessible to both OS's.

of course file permissions still work so user library files in one can't be accessed from the other OS. but anything in other folders can be used by either OS.
 

Colif

Win 11 Master
Moderator
okay, i don't dual boot so im not familiar with it all.

playing with bios boot order sounds like a hassle. Doing it right way is better.

at least its intel, i expect its more fun with Ryzen systems since they didn't exist at all back then.
 

Math Geek

Titan
Ambassador
yah normal dual boot is a lot easier since you get that pretty menu to select from. but i can also understand if someone does not want to blow away their win 10 install.

it takes a while to get it just right and starting over is always a scary thing :)

so there is an alternative for those who simply want to play around with the older OS here and there. but as a daily driver for win 7, i'd suggest the fresh start to keep it as simple as possible.
 
Another option I use is install windows? on one drive and set it up.
Disconnect it.
Connect second drive. Install windows ? on it. and set it up.
shut down and connect first drive.
on boot enter bios and select default boot device.
Boot to that version of windows.
Download easybcd.
install and run.
Edit the boot manager to add all of your other operating systems to the boot menu.
Save and restart. now all of your other operating systems are available in the boot menu.
I have used this for up to 4 different operating systems on 1 computer.