Windows 7 - dual boot anyone?

[chuckerants]

Anyone dual boot into Windows 7 to try it out? I really want to try out the new Beta but I don't want to mess with my main Vista laptop.

 

[bdcardinal]

+1 i just got vista 64 working like a champ on my desktop thats been super buggy with vista 32.

 

[unDummy]

Dual boot is easy to install and uninstall. Simple use Vista to partition part of the drive for 7 and reboot with your 7 DVD. When your tired of the 7, boot into vista and loose the partition.

 

[chuckerants]

Well this is frustrating. I have a 120GB HD on the Vista laptop of which I have 60GB free and the Vista Disk Manager can only allocate 12 GB. This didn't change even when I turned off the pagefile. WTH? Windows 7 apparently has a 16gb min. requirement.

 

[daves87rs]

Wow....

 

[ToyotaNSaturn]

Personally, I would purchase a cheap 2nd drive and use it as a sandbox to play with Win7, or any other OS. With an additional connector, you can use the other drive as a USB storage disk.

 

[uc50ic4more]

 Originally Posted By: chuckerants

Well this is frustrating. I have a 120GB HD on the Vista laptop of which I have 60GB free and the Vista Disk Manager can only allocate 12 GB. This didn't change even when I turned off the pagefile. WTH? Windows 7 apparently has a 16gb min. requirement.

Does your 120GB drive have 60GB on the *same* partition? If so, the installation disk may not be able to clear that much data for a new partition just because it's free; it may only deem 12GB as partitionable. Also, I have seen many manufactured systems with a disk partition for backups and system restores. For example, D:\HP_BACKUP or something to that effect. I guess the first thing I'd try when troubleshooting is to defrag the main drive to ease any NTFS partition resizing attempts and try 'er again.

 

[chuckerants]

Yup, I only have one partition on C Drive. After some research, it seems the inability to "shrink" the HD may be ue to some immovable system files that Vista puts at the end of the partition. I may try using an external USB drive before trying a 3rd party partition manager. the

 Originally Posted By: uc50ic4more

 Originally Posted By: chuckerants

Well this is frustrating. I have a 120GB HD on the Vista laptop of which I have 60GB free and the Vista Disk Manager can only allocate 12 GB. This didn't change even when I turned off the pagefile. WTH? Windows 7 apparently has a 16gb min. requirement.

Does your 120GB drive have 60GB on the *same* partition? If so, the installation disk may not be able to clear that much data for a new partition just because it's free; it may only deem 12GB as partitionable. Also, I have seen many manufactured systems with a disk partition for backups and system restores. For example, D:\HP_BACKUP or something to that effect. I guess the first thing I'd try when troubleshooting is to defrag the main drive to ease any NTFS partition resizing attempts and try 'er again.

 

[Buffman]

I have dual boot of W7 right now and XP. You manage to get a product key for W7? They stopped allowing download of w7 a few weeks ago along with product keys for it.

 

[chuckerants]

I ended up using Easeus Partition Master to free up 24GB and installed W7. It's funny how I had 60GB free before and with a new 25GB partition, I now have 54GB free. This must be the new math according to Microsoft. And no I don't have product key. It asked for it, but I just hit NEXT and it installed fine. I have version 7077.

 Originally Posted By: Buffman

I have dual boot of W7 right now and XP. You manage to get a product key for W7? They stopped allowing download of w7 a few weeks ago along with product keys for it.

 

[Nyquist]

I have a dual boot Vista and Windows 7 set-up. I use Vista at work b/c only officially released OS's can be used in mission critical environments. I use Windows 7 at home with absolutely no complaints. I actually wish I could use Windows 7 at work now.

 

[Buffman]

 Originally Posted By: chuckerants

I ended up using Easeus Partition Master to free up 24GB and installed W7. It's funny how I had 60GB free before and with a new 25GB partition, I now have 54GB free. This must be the new math according to Microsoft. And no I don't have product key. It asked for it, but I just hit NEXT and it installed fine. I have version 7077.

 Originally Posted By: Buffman

I have dual boot of W7 right now and XP. You manage to get a product key for W7? They stopped allowing download of w7 a few weeks ago along with product keys for it.

Interesting. My build is 7000. When I checked last they wouldn't let you download from them... Glad you got it going.

 

[chuckerants]

So far, W7 seems to be noticibly faster that Vista. Some of that perception could be that I have a clean install, but I even notice the speed on W7 in a simple opertion like rendering photos in a directory. Vista takes forever to convert photo icons to thumbnails but W7 is MUCH faster.

 

[Nyquist]

I just got a new notebook with a fresh install of Vista and W7. W7 is definitely faster.