Looking at poissibly dual boot with windoes 7/10

Ian mate personally I always clone the original drive and use the clone to try things out - if the process changes you want to make go south - then it is just a matter of swapping the original drive back and starting over again if that is what you want to do.

Myself I have never liked dual boots and now I am lucky enough to have several machines I can run 7 and 10 on separate ones.

Now if you want to do the upgrade - that is use the free one I would be doing that on the cloned drive. See this first Windows 10 - Dual Boot with Windows 7 or Windows 8 - Windows 10 Forums

Well Ian unless I have it terribly wrong if you stay with the 10 upgrade it will be the only version you can activate/use - the Home version will be replaced by the 10 you cannot keep both - simply because Microsoft are giving you something for free and they will not let you have both on the one machine.

In a nutshell mate there is no such thing as a free lunch.


Did you go through that tutorial?? if you are unsure then I suggest you join up to the forum (at the top of this page - same crew) using your current login details as here - it would a be a plus as you will get info from the horses mouth as it were.

I have an I.T background.

Ahead of me there Ian it's my hobby and at my age my last little bit of pleasure

Now if I were to give you an example I have two machines I clean installed 10 Pro onto as they were 7 Pro installed originally. I believe that now that I have activated the "free" 10 version first with the generic code then with the original code for 7 Pro the code is changed forever in effect making the machine 10 only usable the code for the 7 Pro being now "replaced" on their servers to the 10 Pro version.
If I want 7 Pro back again then I have to either buy a new key (or OEM) and install that as I have ISO's for 7 Home, Pro 64 & 32bit versions I saved before they shut down that Heidoc site when they were free to download.

Now I was dead against having 10 on my machines for reasons of privacy and to be honest after spending a lot of time asking around and reasoning out that if our machines can be hacked in effect by anyone then what chance of stopping completely 10 looking at what you have on your machine?? If for example my banking details were accessed then just think of the repercussions there would be if they were found out to be doing that?? If you go into the settings of 10 you will find most of the "open door" stuff can be stopped by just turning off the setting. Having said that I do go back from time to time to check to see if the settings have been reset especially my email and personal data ones.
If for any reason I had something to hide then I would be loathe to run 10 I would probably opt for something like Linux Mint or Ubuntu - both of which I have used in the past but find the constant having to use command line like stuff to do things a bit tedious.

Well lets face it they are out to make money after all is said and done and I am just guessing here but I would say that the way to go if you just want to game is to get two machines - easy to say but in reality having 10 on one and not using any private data or emails on it would ensure your privacy.

The 7 machine would be your usual day to day machine and you get to keeping that licence COA. Now having a dual boot I am not so sure that it being on one machine would be any safeguard to anyone let alone Microsoft having access to your personal stuff because the 10 would still be on the same drive.

If you were to go down that track of two machines then there are some fixes to stop any upgrade or 10 files getting into the 7 machine and/or deleting them when they creep through with updates. I don't update anymore and to be honest I would have no idea if my machine is good or bad. But I think I mentioned before but if I didn't - I am lucky to have several machines so keep the systems separate. Like I also said my experience with dual boots has never worked out well and I gave away the idea a long time ago.

ianmozzy said:

Thanks for the reply. My main conceren is that my present windows 7 is still working valid while running windows 10.
I am not interested in the 30 day trail to possibly go back before that. I want to keep both until I decide which one I may prefer and keep. Also keep my valid windows 7 licence forever.

I use the drive image software to so t things do not go bad.

The free offer of upgrade has not changed the EULA that everyone must agree to when installing Windows, (and indeed most other software), you can only run one copy of the software at any time. With an upgrade the original licence is replaced by the upgrade licence so you cannot legally run the original and upgrade at the same time the free offer is for an upgrade only not for an extra copy of Windows .