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December 6th, 2016 09:00

Dual boot Windows 7 and Windows 10?

I purchased an Inspiron 3650 directly from Dell.  It came with Windows 7 Pro already installed on the HDD.  It also came with an Operating System disc with Windows 10 Pro.  I've since purchased an SSD and installed it in one of the open SATA ports.

With my only "ownership" of the OSes in the above state (7 installed on HDD, 10 on disc), is there a way for me to set up the SSD so that I can dual boot into either Windows 7 or Windows 10?

One potential issue I see is that my current installation of Windows 7 is installed while my BIOS is in legacy mode, but Windows 10 requires UEFI.  I'm also simply unaware of a way to get Windows 7 onto a bootable disc/usb stick.  Would the backup-recovery factory image somehow work for me to then install it on one of the partitions on the SSD?  Again, I'm thinking it might not work because of the BIOS issue.

Can I download a Windows 7 ISO somewhere and it will see my "hardware ID" and install correctly (ie, I won't need a product ID or something like that)?

Let me know if you need any more information or if I'm unclear on anything.  THANKS!

5 Practitioner

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274.2K Posts

December 6th, 2016 10:00

You can download original Windows 7 ISOs from here. Download the iso you need and then use something like Rufus to make it bootable to a usb stick or use CDBurnerXP and burn the iso to a clean dvd. Install the new os to a clean and different partition than the one which stores the w10.

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