Windows 7: help dual booting win. 8 with my current copy of windows 7

exactly what the title says, the key is doing it without losing my current copy of windows 7 that is installed, i dont want to lose any of my current data.

as i understand it, this can be achieved by, first, shrinking current partition to just slightly larger than you absolutely need it, second, make sure you have room for another partition, boot from 8" disk, install in "new partition" without over writing my last one.



all simple in theory, but i have a few questions, first, i know that you generally have to be careful shrinking partition because of data loss, if this is true, are there any suggestions to do this more safely. second, would this even work! and third, assuming it would, am i correct on the process of creating the new partition for windows 8? ir is there a better way to do it?

also... before i get too far, if anyone has tried this, how did you install 8? when i try to unpack the iso to a DVD/R it is too big (the iso is 4.8gb, larger than your standard DVD/R). i though of using an 8gb thumb drive, but i really hate that process of changing my boot order atleast twice

Yes, that is how most people do it.

You can shrink a partition using Windows 7 disk management.

If you got the bigger iso - that is the one containing the dev tools - which I am guessing you don't really need.

Never mind, you can install it anyway.

There are several ways to install - one way is to mount the iso from within win 7 and run setup from there.

You need something to mount it - I like the free version of Poweriso - but there are plenty of other apps. you could use.

Just click download - it runs as the free version with no time limit.

http://www.poweriso.com/

You might want to untick the boxes if you don't want the avg stuff:

actually i got the dev version on purpose, i spend my deal of time web developing, and have been touching on silverlight and css3. i love my expression studio stuff and although i rarely use visual studio pro anymore except for database management (i like expression more it will be nice to try out what they got.

by mount you mean unpack? i should be able to run it right from in windows if its been unpacked, i may be misunderstanding you, which is quite possible, im not huge on trying the next new os all the time, but i wanted to see how 8 games

i installed powerISO so it dowsnt really matter. so i should be fine shrinking my partition than? and as always, besides the obviouse, use disk manager, are there any other precautionary tips to prevent the need of using a back up, seeing as how i cant make one because my backup drive is a POS

You should be fine using windows disk management.

Whwn you have done that, run poweriso, click mount>set number of drives to 1.

That creates a virtual cd drive.

Select mount image to drive and browse to the win 8 iso.

this would entale that i have a disk/thumb drive with the iso? power iso is not an application for upacking isos correct? or is it?

I presume you downloaded the iso onto your hard drive - downloads folder probably.

Just browse to it there. No need to put it onto a thumb drive or anything.

http://www.poweriso.com/tutorials/iso-mounter.htm

ohok, so select mount... and it wil ask me for a location? and im assuming when it is done i can just run "win8" and it will pop up in a window, i select "un allocated space" as the location to install, and im good to go?