How do I install Windows 7 on a new partition while having Windows 10?

[Aditya_P]

I have Windows 10 Education Edition 64 bit installed. Now I wish to install Windows 7 Ultimate on a new partition. Can I do that? If so, how?

 

[SouthQuay95]

First of all, Disable Fast Boot.

How to disable ‘Fast Boot’:
Make the following changes to the Windows 10 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.

Then,

1) Open Windows 10’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 10” (Without the quotes). Right click on the Windows 10 partition, C: and select ‘Properties’. In the ‘General’ tab change the existing name to: Windows 10 Education Edition and click the ‘Apply’ button.

3) Shrink the Windows 10 partition to create unallocated space for use when installing Windows 7. Right click on the Windows 10 partition, C: and select the ‘Shrink Volume’ option. Now enter a value for the amount of space to shrink in MB. If your current Windows 10 partition contains a lot of data you want to consider a smaller partition size for Windows 7 (75 to 100GB).

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

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

6) 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.

7) 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.

8) 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.

Now Installing Windows 7,

1. To start Windows 7 from an installation disc or USB flash drive

2. Turn on your computer, insert the Windows 7 installation disc or USB flash drive, and then turn off your computer.

3. Restart your computer.

4. Press any key when prompted to do so, and then follow any instructions that appear.

5. When the Install Windows page appears, click Install now to begin the installation process.

Follow the instructions and yeah you're done.

Cheers.

 

[Aditya_P]

Thank you. I am now able to boot into Windows 7 and start the setup. But unfortunately, I have run into another bottleneck. When I see the list of partitions I can install it to, Windows tells me that I cannot install it on a GPT formatted drive. Any workarounds for it?

 

[johnrxx99]

Thank you. I am now able to boot into Windows 7 and start the setup. But unfortunately, I have run into another bottleneck. When I see the list of partitions I can install it to, Windows tells me that I cannot install it on a GPT formatted drive. Any workarounds for it?

I've had the same problem. I suspect Windows 10 is blocking the formatting processes.

 

[SouthQuay95]

Thank you. I am now able to boot into Windows 7 and start the setup. But unfortunately, I have run into another bottleneck. When I see the list of partitions I can install it to, Windows tells me that I cannot install it on a GPT formatted drive. Any workarounds for it?

When installing Windows on a GPT disk you may receive this error. It is largely because your motherboard supports Legacy BIOS only or set to support Legacy only rather than both Legacy and UEFI or CSM boot. Under legacy BIOS mode, we can only install Windows to a MBR disk since traditional BIOS cannot recognize GPT partition, but data read /write on GPT disk is available as long as Windows supports. Windows 7 is widely installed on MBR partitions but Windows 10 supports installation GPT partitions which is not supported by Windows 7.