Help with dual booting two instances of windows 7

[Moltenlava]

Hi i wanted to have a dual boot in my system because I'm currently using windows 7 ultimate 32 bit but my computer does support 64 bit and i want u upgrade it, you don't know what a pain it is trying to get games that work on 32 bit nowadays hence i want to upgrade, I don't want to reinstall windows as there are a lot of files and I have been using this computer for years it even has my dads work files so yeah... I watched some YT videos and all of em were from win10 to win7 I have a bootable USB and I can figure out how to boot from it but I'm scared that I will lose access to the old system I have a new partition ready after I shrank my drive to make space for this. I just want to be sure that windows will identify both the operating systems and give me the option to choose I don't want to risk it. SO is it safe?

 

[iko22]

Hello Moltenlava and welcome to the Forum,

The best advise would be to make a backup system image of your Windows 7 32-bit installation, before you proceed with any changes. That way, if something does go wrong, you can always recover from the backup.

Once, you are ready to start, set your USB stick as the first boot drive, from within BIOS. So, long as you remember not to overwrite the partition containing the Win 7 installation, things should be pretty straight forward and self-evident, from there onwards.

 

[Paul Black]

Hi Moltenlava,

Welcome to SevenForums!

The best advise would be to make a backup system image of your Windows 7 32-bit installation, before you proceed with any changes. That way, if something does go wrong, you can always recover from the backup.

I totally agree with iko22 .
There are two imaging programs which are very popular among members here, the first is AOMEI Backupper Standard [FREE], and the second is Macrium Reflect [FREE].

I hope this helps!

 

[Moltenlava]

System Image

Would System image backup files too or only the core system files sry for late reply

 

[Paul Black]

Hi Moltenlava,

Would System image backup files too or only the core system files sry for late reply.

System Image backs up everything including system files and your personal files.

I hope this helps!

 

[Moltenlava]

Paul Black and iko Thanks! also, thanks for recommending me a good backup software will post back when I have successfully completed this procedure

 

[AddRAM]

Why don`t you buy a new SSD to install the 64 bit version on ?

Unplug the 32 bit drive, then install windows on the 64 bit SSD.

Then plug them both back in, and use the one time boot menu (usually) F8 to choose the OS you want to use.

Just another option