W10/W7 dual boot

[Cornish Jack]

Just got a 'new' box for SWMBO. HP Elite 8300, 130 SSD with W10 installed +500Gb HDD. Would like to swap 500Gb for similar from the present machine which is W7 64bit Pro. Any pitfalls, please?

[PJD1]

If I understand your question correctly you want to replace the 500gb hard drive in the new computer with one from a different computer that has W7 installed on it and be able to dual boot to either W10 or W7?


If so then it is highly unlikely that you would be able to get this to work. The W7 installation on the old computer will be "tied" to the hardware on that machine and would be unlikely to work with the hardware on the new machine also there would be problems with the licence activation which is also tied to the hardware. Some info on the subject here https://www.howtogeek.com/239815/why-cant-you-move-a-windows-installation-to-another-computer/


The only realistic way of setting up a dual boot would be to do a clean install of W7 onto the second hard drive in the new machine, to do this you would need a W7 install disk and a valid licence key. There is lots of info on the net on how to set up a dual boot system.

[Cornish Jack]

Thank you PJD1 -Yes, got it in one! I hadn't taken on board the tie-up between the W7 OS and the machine. Should have realised tha MS avoid customer convenience whenever possible!

[Saab Dastard]

The W7 installation on the old computer will be "tied" to the hardware on that machine and would be unlikely to work with the hardware on the new machine
Technically this is more likely to be possible than not. As long as the old disk is SATA (and not PATA) then Windows will sort itself out - provided you can supply all the drivers for the new hardware. I have done this several times, even moving from intel to AMD or vice-versa.

If you are going to try this, I would remove or disable your Win 10 boot disk first to ensure that you don't inadvertently screw that up!

PJD1 is quite right about the licensing problem, though. Unless it was a full retail version of Windows 7 (i.e. not an OEM license that came with the PC), which is fully transferable, you can't (legally) use the licence on a different PC.

If your licence allows it and you want to go ahead, you can do a "sort-of" dual-boot by simply changing the HDD boot order in the BIOS - not as clean as having a boot menu option, but saves re-installing one or other of the existing OS installations.

SD