Dual Boot Win7 and Win10

[BloodDrunk]

Anybody done this? Encountered problems or anything?
I'm willing to do it, because I need Win10 for some things, but i want Win7 because it'll be my primary OS.

 

[Dr Super Good]

Nothing stops you from doing this. However your primary OS should be Windows 10 as it is the most secure/fastest/up to date.

In theory it should be as easy as making a new partition and then installing Windows 10 on it. When the computer restarts it should allow you to select which you want to boot into.

 

[andreasaspenberg]

i agree with you. windows 7 is much more secure than windows 10 anyway but not as secure as windows 8.1. my experiences with windows 10 is that it is very insecure(hackers have no problem getting in and causing mayhem). i have tried dual boot with nt based systems(xp and 2000) and only one works. i suggest either separate pcs or separate harddrives. separate harddrives is cheaper but more work(need to switch harddrive when you switch system) while mulriple pcs is less work but more costly. you do need one license for each operating system either way.

 

[Dr Super Good]

windows 7 is much more secure than windows 10 anyway but not as secure as windows 8.1.

Windows 10 is more secure than Windows 7, unpatched Windows 7 has a lot of security exploits that are inherently fixed in Windows 10 due to the kernel being developed later and based on the work done for Windows 8 which was based on the work done for Windows 7. Additionally Windows 10 removing some legacy components has improved security. Windows 10 more strict update policy means it is harder for security exploits to exist long enough to be used.

A lot of the machines that were subject to ransomware earlier this year were Windows 7 machines and not Windows 10.

It is worth noting that the only Windows NT based OS one can run on modern processors is Windows 10. Earlier versions of Windows will fail to boot as they do not support modern processors. Modern processors include all recently released and future releases from AMD and Intel, but not processors released before then. There is no work around as far as I know, so get used to Windows 10 sooner rather than later.

i have tried dual boot with nt based systems(xp and 2000) and only one works. i suggest either separate pcs or separate harddrives. separate harddrives is cheaper but more work(need to switch harddrive when you switch system) while mulriple pcs is less work but more costly. you do need one license for each operating system either way.

If one can dual boot an OS on a modern computer depends if they support UEFI, which older OSes do not as they were designed to boot using BIOS only. This means that having a Windows 10 and XP dual boot is likely impossible on a modern motherboard as Windows 10 can use UEFI but XP cannot. Older motherboard hardware that still uses a BIOS, or some newer ones in BIOS compatibility mode should be able to dual boot Windows 10 and XP.

It is getting to the stage I would advise running an XP virtual machine in Windows 10 rather than dual booting. Even if it is slower, no software that needs XP that does not work on Windows 10 requires so much performance.

 

[andreasaspenberg]

one problem with vitual machines is a lack of 3d so they can run 2d stuff only. one thing you could try is use 2 harddrives and then choose which one to boot from. that will usually cause the last harddrive booted to boot. i forgot about that possibility. it does require 2 actual harddrives i believe.

 

[Dr Super Good]

one problem with vitual machines is a lack of 3d so they can run 2d stuff only.

One problem with free virtual machines is a lack of 3D accelerator support. It is entirely possible to get virtual machines with full 3D accelerator support however they usually are quite costly.

An example of this is the Xbox One's Xbox 360 virtual machine. As far as the games are concerned it appears as an Xbox 360 GPU even though the graphic commands end up being executed on the Xbox One GPU.

 

[pyf]

windows 7 is much more secure than windows 10 anyway but not as secure as windows 8.1. my experiences with windows 10 is that it is very insecure(hackers have no problem getting in and causing mayhem).

Windows 10 is more secure than Windows 7, unpatched Windows 7 has a lot of security exploits that are inherently fixed in Windows 10 due to the kernel being developed later and based on the work done for Windows 8 which was based on the work done for Windows 7. Additionally Windows 10 removing some legacy components has improved security. Windows 10 more strict update policy means it is harder for security exploits to exist long enough to be used.

A lot of the machines that were subject to ransomware earlier this year were Windows 7 machines and not Windows 10.

@andreasaspenberg : fyi:
Use Windows Defender Exploit Guard to protect your network

 

[pyf]

[...] Additionally Windows 10 removing some legacy components has improved security. [...]

For the record:
Features that are removed or deprecated in Windows 10 Fall Creators Update - Microsoft Support

 

[andreasaspenberg]

removal of screen savers is kind of mean. windows 10 have terrible backwards compatibility(no support for id tech 4, all id tech 4 games last less than a minute before they close down). i would recommend windows 8.1 instead of windows 7 as its backwards compatibility is the best of all windows systems(better than windows 7).

 

[Dr Super Good]

Windows 10 backwards compatibility is fine. It only fails to run games which purposely did something bad as part of their "copy protection".