Dual-booting Windows 7 Home Premium and Enterprise

[Pythene]

Hi,

I received a laptop from my work which is currently running Windows 7 enterprise. Unfortunately, our administrator is a bit on the overzealous side about what to-and what not to block, and the whole "I will watch you through the built in webcam" shenanigans, I'd like to dual-boot the enterprise OS with my own Windows 7 home premium. Is this possible?

Thanks!

 

[AddRAM]

Of course you can, make a partition from Windows 7 Enterprize, then install W7 Home Premium on it.

 

[Pythene]

Great! I'll start on it as soon as this Chkdsk finishes (wouldn't let me partition until it's happy >_< )

I do have one question though - the laptop does not have a DVD drive of any sort, for some reason. I have the installation CDs for windows 7 though; what would be the easiest way to utilize them? I have an external hd if that might help.

 

[AddRAM]

Then you might try using an external DVD drive. Having an external HD does not help anything.

 

[Slammer]

If you have a separate computer with a DVD drive, you can turn a flash drive into a bootable media that you can use to install it onto the computer that doesn't have the DVD drive. Your external HD should work fine for this, just know that everything will be deleted off it if you use it for this. Here's a link to the tutorial: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/2432-usb-windows-7-installation-key-drive-create.html Of course, if you have an external DVD drive, that should work fine, but not a lot of people have those.

Also, you should be aware that if it's the company's laptop (as in they still own it and are just letting you use it) you'll probably get in a lot of trouble for doing this. If your admin is as paranoid as you say, he'll know very quickly what you've done. But if it's actually been given to you (as in you completely own it now) then you'll be fine. I'm not going to try to stop you from doing this if it's still owned by your company, just be aware that when they find out what you've done, at best you'll probably get the computer taken away, and worst you'll probably get fired/severely reprimanded. Just be aware

 

[gregrocker]

Extract the Win7 iSO file from installation DVD, write to flash stick using Universal USB Installer
with Win7 in the dropdown menu. Then boot under USB, Removable or HD's in one-time BIOS Boot Menu key.

Same as here: Dual Boot Installation with Windows 7 and Vista

 

[theog]

As you are using Company Notebook have a word with the Company IT Administrator.