Dual Boot Win 7 and Win 10

Hi all,

This may have been asked & solved previously, but maybe not the way I'm hoping to do it?

I'd like to dual boot Win 7 and Win 10, but some brief background info first may help. I'm running Win 7 on a 120Gb SSD with a single partition. I also have 2 HDDs - one for images and backups and the other for docs, music etc.

Using Acronis 2014, I imaged this and saved it before doing the free Win 10 upgrade. Once upgraded, I imaged that too.

Then I reset the PC to do a clean install of Win 10 - and imaged that too.

Currently, I'm back on Win 7 having restored it's image. Some of my software runs better on this than Win 10.

I have been switching between 7 and 10 by restoring respective images, but this is a bit laborious so dual boot seems the logical option.

Here's what I'd like to do, but don't know if it will work ?

Within Win 7, partition my 120GB SSD to give two 60GB ones - the current one for Win 7 and the second 60GB partition for Win 10.

Once the Win 10 partition is created, is it possible to simply restore my Acronis created Win 10 image to this partition? Will the MBR see the change when I boot for the first time afterwards and give me the option of which OS to boot in to?

What should I need to do within Acronis to get the MBR/boot manager to work correctly?

If that won't work, how best to go about a dual boot? I don't have a disk/image of Win 10 to use as I upgraded & clean installed from within Win 7 - so does this mean I would have to install Win 7 on the new partition and go through the Win 10 upgrade and clean install again on the new partition?

Appreciate the help and many thanks

Dumfy

ThrashZone said:

Hi,
Unless you have two win-7 license activation keys you are in violation of the free upgrade offer by using the win-7 install and win-10 in dual boot in any arrangement.

Wow - that never even occurred to me. Guess that'll be game over then . . . . .