Dual booting

My laptop has a 1TB HDD. It came preloaded with windows 10 but I'd like 7 also. So.. I'd like to dualboot.. but I only have one harddrive. Is it possible to load W7 onto a partition I create? If so, then how?

 

Thank you,

Jonathan

See here: How to Dual Boot Windows 10 with Windows 7 or Windows 8

don't think that tutorial will work ztruker, he's not adding a windows 10 os to an already running windows 7 system but the reverse.

 

now from my understanding it is possible but there may be a lot of issues to understand and work around. secure boot, gpt, etc. etc.

 

not having a windows 10 pc (and never will.) i can't experiment to find out exactly how to do it i'm afraid.. so no real help from me.

 

I wanted to do the reverse it seemed fineI'm pretty sure it applies, and got the ISO file onto a USB (I already have a product key). BUT in my studies I found that installing from newer to older OS is dangerous because the older os might not recognize any newer system files and might overwrite them, making the newer OS susceptible to be damaged. Now I dunno if that matters since I'll be installing into an entirely empty partition, but it IS a partition on the physical drive so I don't know.. If I mess up I have no way to get my OS back because it comes pre installed… is there anyway I can make a copy of the OS and put it on a disc? Shouldn't be anythin illegal because you need product keys anyway right?

doing the install to a separate partition won't overwrite the current os on there, (i suggest leaving the new partition you've created for windows 7 as empty space so windows 7 can create it's own partitions in there. ie. 100mb boot and rest for os install.) so you won't loose that, but the problem is it may break the windows 10 bootloader so you can no longer boot into that os.

this can be fixed so eventually you will have a choice of booting into both operating systems but is something you will need to be aware of.

 

main issues i foresee, never having done what you want, is first you may need to make some changes in the uefi like turning off secure boot before the windows 7 install media will boot, 2nd is windows 10 always uses uefi and gpt partitioning of it's hard drives, you may need to set uefi to use legacy boot mode instead of uefi boot mode to install windows 7.

 

like i said never done it myself and there are a number of things i can think of that could stop it from installing that will need to be looked at and worked around or maybe fixed if it does successfully install like the bootloader.

 

one thing i will suggest you definitely do though before attempting anything is to make a complete backup image of your hard drive before doing anything that way if things do go wrong, you can easily put the pc back to how it is now.

 

 

how to make a complete system image backup using windows 10 :- http://www.windowscentral.com/how-make-full-backup-windows-pc

Every reference I've read says install Windows 7 first, then Windows 10.

yes that is the usual recommended way, older os followed by newer os that way you don't have to fix the bootloader, but it is possible to do it the other way around to.