Dual Boot Installation with Windows 7 and Vista

Hi Howard,

E.g. Vista is installed first.

Install 7 in the normal way by booting the dvd - install 7 to another partition and when you boot into 7 - it will see itself as C.

7 will see Vista as a different letter - which you will assign with 7 Disk Management.

That is the letter 7 will see Vista as. It does not affect the letter Vista sees itself as having.

When you boot back into Vista - Vista still sees itself as C and everything installed there is as was.

Whichever you are booted into sees itself as C.

Whichever is the Active partition during installation will contain the boot critical files.

If you wish to avoid that - Create another partition from within Vista using Disk Management - give it the drive letter of your choice- Install virtual dvd drive in Vista and pick up the 7 iso with that - run the 7 installation from within Vista.

Point the 7 installer at the partition you just created for it.

7 will take whatever drive letter you gave the partition you made to install it on.

Again , the boot critical files will be on the Active partition at the time of installation.

SIW2 said:

Hi Howard,

E.g. Vista is installed first.

Install 7 in the normal way by booting the dvd - install 7 to another partition and when you boot into 7 - it will see itself as C.

7 will see Vista as a different letter - which you will assign with 7 Disk Management.

That is the letter 7 will see Vista as. It does not affect the letter Vista sees itself as having.

When you boot back into Vista - Vista still sees itself as C and everything installed there is as was.

Whichever you are booted into sees itself as C.

That is not acceptable.

C has to always have Vista and, say, G has to always have Win 7.

SIW2 said:

Whichever is the Active partition during installation will contain the boot critical files.

I really do not care where the boot files live, as long as I have the choice of OS when I boot.

SIW2 said:

If you wish to avoid that - Create another partition from within Vista using Disk Management - give it the drive letter of your choice- Install virtual dvd drive in Vista and pick up the 7 iso with that - run the 7 installation from within Vista.

Do you mean create two partitions in Vista?
Into one, say, G , I would install Win 7 using drive letter G, and C would be retained for whatever.
And. a 2nd partition into which I would have copied the content of the Win 7 installation media.

I do not understand "Install virtual dvd drive in Vista and pick up the 7 iso with that".

SIW2 said:

Point the 7 installer at the partition you just created for it.

7 will take whatever drive letter you gave the partition you made to install it on.

Again , the boot critical files will be on the Active partition at the time of installation.

In this case the boot critical files will end up on C?
And when booted to Win 7, C will have the Vista files and G would have Win 7?

I think installing from a virtual drive is the way to go for what you want.

I did that and the drive letters are the same all the time - whichever o/s I am booted into.

It is very easy to do with a free app.

The only snag is:

If you are on 64 bit you can install either 64 or 32 bit o/s from a virtual drive.

If you are on 32 bit - you can only use a virtual drive to install a 32bit o/s from.

Assuming that is not a problem , you can do it with the free (unregistered ) version of PowerIso.

PowerISO - Create, Edit, Compress, Encrypt, Split, Mount, Extract ISO file, ISO/BIN converter, Virtual Drive

SIW2 said:

I think installing from a virtual drive is the way to go for what you want.

I did that and the drive letters are the same all the time - whichever o/s I am booted into.

It is very easy to do with a free app.

The only snag is:

If you are on 64 bit you can install either 64 or 32 bit o/s from a virtual drive.

If you are on 32 bit - you can only use a virtual drive to install a 32bit o/s from.

Assuming that is not a problem , you can do it with the free (unregistered ) version of PowerIso.

PowerISO - Create, Edit, Compress, Encrypt, Split, Mount, Extract ISO file, ISO/BIN converter, Virtual Drive

Why mess with a virtual drive?

Can not I copy the Win 7 media to a separate partition in Vista and then install from that partition?

But how is that any different from booting to Vista and running the Win 7 setup from the Win 7 media? Same files, n'est-ce pas?

Vista will have all it's programs, applications and shortcuts installed on C.

When you boot to Win 7 and install any programs, applications and shortcuts they will be on C. Install Win 7 from a booted DVD on the G drive, and when you boot to 7, it will be C. It's not like you will be running programs on the G drive when you are booted to Vista.

Howard Kaikow said:

SIW2 said:

I think installing from a virtual drive is the way to go for what you want.

I did that and the drive letters are the same all the time - whichever o/s I am booted into.

It is very easy to do with a free app.

The only snag is:

If you are on 64 bit you can install either 64 or 32 bit o/s from a virtual drive.

If you are on 32 bit - you can only use a virtual drive to install a 32bit o/s from.

Assuming that is not a problem , you can do it with the free (unregistered ) version of PowerIso.

PowerISO - Create, Edit, Compress, Encrypt, Split, Mount, Extract ISO file, ISO/BIN converter, Virtual Drive

Why mess with a virtual drive?

Can not I copy the Win 7 media to a separate partition in Vista and then install from that partition?

But how is that any different from booting to Vista and running the Win 7 setup from the Win 7 media? Same files, n'est-ce pas?

You can do that if you like - same idea, install from within Vista and keep the drive lettering. If you have 7 in the form of the o/s files - probably easier.

I have the virtual drive apps installed anyway , I have the o/s in .iso files, and it seems to be quicker.

Up to you.

Mike B said:

Vista will have all it's programs, applications and shortcuts installed on C.

When you boot to Win 7 and install any programs, applications and shortcuts they will be on C. Install Win 7 from a booted DVD on the G drive, and when you boot to 7, it will be C. It's not like you will be running programs on the G drive when you are booted to Vista.

I've been running multiboot since at least Windows 95.

I some cases a prog can be installed in 1 OS, and run from other OS.
Or, there may be files that one needs to share amongst OS.

Another, better, approach is have another parttion in which shared files/programs can be installed, rather than plopping then on the C drive for an OS.

I use both approaches.

Win 7 seems to want to hide the C drive for other OS.
This forces me to use the better, approach of putting common files in a separate partition.

For some programs, this may be easy, e.g., Firefox an Thunderbird. For others, it might be difficult to have thg prog and related files in separate partitions.

I guess that I'll yell Uncle! and use the approach of creating a separate programs partition, as well as a separate data partition, or have separate folders in a separate partition.

More importantly, as I look at my calendar, I note that we are now in 2009, with 2010 not far away.

Isn't it about time that MSFT dropped all this partition/drive letter nonesense, and just used mount points?

I've read your extensive profile and have no doubt of you ability and knowledge.

With my limited use of Windows dual boot, I have found that some programs can be run from Win 7 that are on the Vista drive. Those that have associated files, do not load with their saved documents or settings.

I was just saying that the way 7 installs is the way it is. That's a good idea of a shared partition.

Don't you miss the DOS days? Xtree, Norton Utilities, PCTools, etc? There was so much more control then. Someplace, I still have Windows 1.0 and Norton .1.

Mike B said:

The most recent install will show up as the "C" drive. If you had Vista installed on the "C" drive and made a partition "D" for 7, after 7 is installed and booted, 7 would now be your "C" drive and the Vista partition would now show as the "D" drive.

If you booted to Vista, it would then show Vista as the "C" drive and 7 would then be the "D" drive.

It is all explained in the tutorial. It worked that way for me today when I installed 7 on a new drive. When booted to 7, I see the "E" drive as Vista, but when I boot to Vista, I see the "E" drive as 7 and I can access the files on the Vista drive from 7 and vise versa.

Hope this helps.

One reason it is necessary to have both partitions show up with drive letters, in both OS, is for the purposes of image backup programs.

I sure would not want to boot to Vista just to back up Vista.
Running an image backup from Win 7 should be able to backup all partitions.

And running a restore from an image backup recovery disk should be able to restore both OS.

I'll keep that in mind.