Windows 7 Installation – Dual Boot
If you are planning to install Windows 7, then scrapping your existing OS is not really required. Windows 7 can co-exist with its predecessors Vista as well as XP. Installing the Windows 7 operating system (OS) on the same hard disk as the old operating system or on a totally different hard disk will allow you to boot into either OS on the PC.
Installing Windows 7 on the same hard disk is fairly simple except that you will have to create a new partition to set up the OS. There are several third party tools for creating partitions, with tutorials too being available on how to use these tools. XP users will have to go in for third party tools to create and manage partitions; however, the same can be achieved using an in-built disk-management facility available on Vista, which can be accessed from the Administrative Tools -> Computer Management option of the control panel.
Irrespective of the tool you use, make sure you shrink existing partitions to free up more than 25 GB, create a new primary partition for Windows 7 with at least 20–25 GB space, map a drive name to the partition, and format the new simple volume in NTFS mode.
When you are through with the above steps, you could move on to Windows 7 installation, either using the DVD, or .ISO files. Just remember to do a Custom (advanced) installation so that you can select the drive on which Windows 7 will be installed. By selecting a different partition you may end up over-writing the existing OS files. If you are not able to boot from the disk, check your BIOS settings and enable the system to first boot from the disk drive, if disk is available.
Being a dual boot installation, make sure to back up before starting to re-size the partitions. Also watch out for a hidden system reserved partition that will be created during the installation of Windows 7, which can be removed later if you require the space.
You could use free tools such Easeus Partition Manager,, or GParted to manage the partitions on your system. Burn the GParted Live CD onto a CD, and boot from the CD into the partitioning utility.
One known problem in case of dual boot from XP and Windows 7 is that you will not be able to see the XP partition in the Windows Explorer while using Windows 7. To address this issue, do check out step 4 of the dual boot tutorial on APC mag. Installing Windows 7 from within the older OS has also been reported to rectify this problem, making the XP partition visible from Windows 7.
Yes. I have Vista and windows seven in my computer. I thought that I will be able to boot I to either windows Vista or windows seven. First I tried with Vista and I was able to login to Vista. But when I tried to boot into Windows 7, I got this error message.
“Windows failed to start. A recent hardware or software change might be the cause”