Installing Win 7 Pro on New SSD - AHCI, Dual Boot and Other Questions

- As Samuria and I wrote, all needed drivers for installation should be on the Win 7 installation disk. But there will be some specific drivers, like LAN, sound etc drivers that you will need to install after the Windows installation. Don't worry, that isn't critical and it's easy to get installed.
- You didn't mention how much memory you have, but if it's less than 4G, install win 7 32. It will run better.
- Once you have your Win 7 running, with all drivers set, Updates installed, Windows activated, you have done the basic. If you going to have common programs (like Firefox) on both partitions, also install those programs.
- As IE is part of the OS, I strongly suggest you install IE 11 and all security updates related.
- To create a new partition, you will have to make some space for it. So you will have to shrink the existing partition with Windows Disk manager (C:\Windows\System32\diskmgmt.msc) or with Best Free Partition Manager for Windows | MiniTool Partition Free
- My suggestion is to make both Win 7 partition 85G. Create another partition with the remaining space to store data. Then you can access the data from both Win 7 installations.
- Once you created both 85G partitions, clone the fist Win 7 partition to the second partition. MiniTool Partition Free has a copy partition wizard.
You will have same installation on both partitions but you will only be able to boot the fist one. Use EasyBCD (EasyBCD 2.3 Download - TechSpot) to make it dual boot.

It's very important that, when you begin Win 7 installation, you disconnect ALL other disks from MB.
Clean Install Windows 7 - Windows 7 Help Forums

Megahertz07 said:

- As Samuria and I wrote, all needed drivers for installation should be on the Win 7 installation disk. But there will be some specific drivers, like LAN, sound etc drivers that you will need to install after the Windows installation. Don't worry, that isn't critical and it's easy to get installed.
- You didn't mention how much memory you have, but if it's less than 4G, install win 7 32. It will run better.
- Once you have your Win 7 running, with all drivers set, Updates installed, Windows activated, you have done the basic. If you going to have common programs (like Firefox) on both partitions, also install those programs.
- As IE is part of the OS, I strongly suggest you install IE 11 and all security updates related.
- To create a new partition, you will have to make some space for it. So you will have to shrink the existing partition with Windows Disk manager (C:\Windows\System32\diskmgmt.msc) or with Best Free Partition Manager for Windows | MiniTool Partition Free
- My suggestion is to make both Win 7 partition 85G. Create another partition with the remaining space to store data. Then you can access the data from both Win 7 installations.
- Once you created both 85G partitions, clone the fist Win 7 partition to the second partition. MiniTool Partition Free has a copy partition wizard.
You will have same installation on both partitions but you will only be able to boot the fist one. Use EasyBCD (EasyBCD 2.3 Download - TechSpot) to make it dual boot.

It's very important that, when you begin Win 7 installation, you disconnect ALL other disks from MB.
Clean Install Windows 7 - Windows 7 Help Forums

Thank you so much! I have more questions.

I want to be sure... Do you think the Win 7 installer already has the AHCI driver and I don't need to point the installer to a driver disk having the AHCI driver during Win 7 installation? This seems to be the procedure recommended when installing RAID drivers (if you're using RAID) and I know now that the AHCI driver is found as one of the files in the RAID driver download from Asrock.

I just bought additional 4GB of RAM so I will have 8GB now.

I don't understand why I have to "shrink the existing partition". I have a 500GB SSD. Before installing Win 7, I will create a 100GB primary partition and then install Win 7 on that partition. Once all the basic installations are done, I will create a second 100GB partition and then clone the first partition to the second partition. So why do I need to shrink the first partition?

Now, after cloning, can I modify the size of the second partition? Why do the first and second partitions have to be the same size? I want the second partition to be larger than the first because I will be storing more data on the second partition.

What will happen if I still have other disks connected when I begin the Win 7 installation? I know to be careful to point the Win 7 installer to the correct disk where Win 7 should be installed, so does it matter if other disks are still connected or are you just suggesting this as an extra ounce of precaution?

Thanks again!

In my case, I won't have the system reserved partition (boot loader?) since I will create the primary partition on which I'm going to install Windows before I run the installation DVD. I just have to be careful to point the installation to install Windows on the primary partition that I created. So I guess it's alright if there are still other drives connected during the install as long as I'm careful, right?

Thank you so much for your detailed answers to all my questions! I really appreciate your help.

Better be safe than sorry.
You don't need to take out the other drives. Just disconnect the power or SATA cables.

System reserved is on OEM computers. They have the boot loader, diagnostic, Factory recover and other programs.
On a clean install you don't create System reserved but it will create M$ reserved (120M). If you you create the partitions on another computer, you wont have the M$ reserved.

Did you succeed on installing Win 7 on your computer?
Give us a feedback.

Megahertz07 said:

Did you succeed on installing Win 7 on your computer?
Give us a feedback.

I haven't gotten to it yet. I got so busy at work and didn't have time. I'm still also gathering more information and getting updated software for all the apps that I'm going to install in Win 7, and I have so many apps to install. I'll let you know when I'm finally done with it.

BTW I got a reply from Asrock (manufacturer of my motherboard) to install/update the AMD All-In-1, Realtek HD Audio, LAN, and VGA drivers (from the set of drivers downloaded from their site) after running the Win 7 installation. They said these are the only drivers that I need to install/update. They're probably just trying to be certain, and maybe some of those drivers are already found on the Win 7 installer, but I guess it doesn't hurt to install/update them again.

I started installing Win 7 Pro 64-Bit. I'm stuck at installing update KB3125574. It tries to install but after some time it says The following updates were not installed: Update for Windows (KB3125574)

What should I do?

You must have first to install KB3020369.
MS releases SP2 for Windows 7 - Windows 7 Help Forums