Windows 7 and Windows 10 on the same Desktop PC?

I'm afraid I'm going to come off like a newbie, but I'm swimming in uncharted waters here.

What I would like to do is install Win10 Pro on one internal SSD while keeping my present Win7 Pro installed on a second internal SSD, allowing me to continue using Win7 while familiarizing myself with Win10.

Assuming that this is possible, would there be any way of switching between Win7 and Win10 while the computer is running, as is possible with Win7 and virtual XP? If a reboot would be required, how would I tell the computer which OS to boot into?

As always, any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

In each reboot, you would have to go into BIOS setup & choose the boot drive.

 

I had already come to the same conclusion, but thanks for confirming it.

 

I had this with Win 7 on one HD and Win 8.1 on a different one.

 

Thanks, Bill, good to know

 

Thanks Christer, I'll check it out.

 

Hi JIm, I've been trying to remember the Boot Manager I used back in XP days.
https://neosmart.net/EasyBCD/
Have a look in here to see if this is what you need.

 

Thank for the suggestion, RL, I'll take a look.

 

First, thanks to all of you who have weighed in on this thread.

Second, I shouldn't have marked the thread as Resolved, as I've spent nearly two full days struggling with a seemingly unsolvable problem.

I have two identical 500GB SSD cards installed. That may seem like overkill, but 250GB proved to be too small. I have my Windows 7 Pro installed one one SSD, and finally managed to get Windows 10 Pro installed on the other. I say finally, because I originally intended to use the Win10 installation program to overwrite the Win7 OS on the C: partition, in conjunction with the three partitions, D:, E:, and F:, that I use with OS Win7 C:. Unfortunately, after the installation was nearly finished, it came to a stop, informing me that it was unable to continue any further because certain files it was looking for in the Win7 OS could not be accessed. That probably has to do with the fact that I've been unable to install several Windows Updates.

As I said, I finally have Windows 10 Pro installed on the other SSD and, I have to say, I absolutely hate it. Out of the box, so to speak, it seems to be nothing more than a computerized billboard for Microsoft products. It appears that it's going to take a lot of tweaking to get it to be useful.

Which leads me to the real problem of having two OSs in a single computer, one which hadn't occurred to me before I began this project. My system is set up with several partitions, with the OS residing in the C: partition, and you can have only one C: partition in the computer. Right now that's set up with the Win7 OS. To be able to access the Win10 installation, I have to go through the laborious process of removing the C: designation from the Win7 OS and re-assigning it to the Win10 OS.

I'll be forever grateful for any advice that will simplify things for me.

 

Thanks Christer. After you mentioned it I saw the link but, truthfully, I had never noticed it before. The thread is now marked "Unsolved".

It appears that you have both of your OSs on the same disk, and I'm not ready to do that just yet. I've already spent more time than expected on this project, and I have other matters that need my attention.

At the ripe young age of 84, I don't prioritize as well as I used to, and my "rememberer" has become a selective sieve ... I remember quite well things that happened 50 years ago, but not things that happened 5 minutes ago. As an example, I'll go to a room to get, or do, something and, by the time I get there, I have no idea what I intended to get or do. More, later.

 

Right now I have Win7's OS in the C: partition on one SSD, along with D:, E:, and F: partitions. On the other SSD I have the Win10 OS in a single partition, presently set as G:. Yesterday evening I re-lettered the partitions, making the Win10's partition D:.

When I tried to boot from the Win10 partition, I got a black screen with the message "NTLDR is missing". This surprised me, as that usually means that WinXP is somehow involved, yet the Win10 installation program was downloaded from Microsoft rather than a third party, and it was installed on a never used SSD. While running Win7, I can open the various Win10 folders in Windows Explorer to see the included files, but that's as far as I'm able to go.

Any thoughts?

 

Thanks for your helpful reply, Steve. In response, all I can do is refer you to what Christer said in post #12.

 

If you look at my post #16, you'll see that I said "Yesterday evening I re-lettered the partitions, making the Win10's partition D:." In other words, partitions D:, E:, and F: on the Win7 SSD became E:, F:, and G:, and the previously lettered G: (temporarily lettered X: to make room for the new G: on the Win7 SSD ) on the Win10 SSD became the new D:.

As much as I would have liked your approach to work, it didn't, which is when I got the "LTDR is missing" message. So, I put all the drive letters back to the way they were, and now my computer boots into Win7 just as it did before this all started.