Dual Booting Windows 7 with pre-installed Windows 8 Laptop

Hi All,
Just after a bit of advice, my girlfriend has recently got a new laptop and unfortunately she doesn't like it, despite me loving Windows 8.1.
She would like to try Windows 8 but is going back to Uni soon so would like Windows 7 as a back-up dual booted.
I've shrunk the partition and created a simple partition for Windows 7 but really unsure about Installing Windows 7 on a Windows 8 Laptop, it's an ASUS X550CA-XX417H. I've checked power shell with SecureBootUEFI and result is True.
What would be the best way to dual boot?
Cheers,
Ben

Hi Ben,
Here is a detailed guide for your reference:
How to Dual Boot Windows 8 with Windows 7
http://www.pagestart.com/win8dbwin701181301.html
This response contains a reference to a third party World Wide Web site. Microsoft is providing this information as a convenience to you. Microsoft does not control these sites and has not tested any software or information found on
these sites; therefore, Microsoft cannot make any representations regarding the quality, safety, or suitability of any software or information found there.
Hope this could be helpful.
Kate Li
TechNet Community Support

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How to repartition HDD of HP notebook with pre-installed Windows 7.

Disclaimer
You are using this guide at your own risk. I don't take any responsibility for any problems.
Important information
Please create a set of recovery discs, Windows 7 System Repair Disc and back up all important data before you will do anything.These steps will save you a lot of troubles if something will go wrong.
            Resources:
       Creating Recovery Discs or Saving a Recovery Image to a USB Flash Drive (Windows 7)
         How to Create a Windows 7 System Repair Disc
Remember that if you will decide to use the recovery discs or the F11 option to restore the PC to its original condition, all partitions which were created by you will be lost and all the data which were stored on them will also be lost.
Table of Contents:
A How to use the guide
B Basic information which you need to know
C Our problem
D Possible solutions to the problem
E Pros and cons
F Convert the C partition
G Remove the HP_TOOLS partition
H Remove the RECOVERY partition
I Remove the SYSTEM partition
J FAQ
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** Make it easier for other people to find solutions, by marking my answer with "Accept as Solution" if it solves your issue. **

A How to use the guide
It is very important to do everything step by step, because each point of this guide contains important information.
Read the document even several times and do the necessary steps only when it's clear what needs to be done.
I would like to emphasize once again that a very important part of this process is to ensure the safety of your data.
Please create a set of recovery discs, Windows 7 System Repair Disc and back up all important data before you will do anything.
Remember that if you will decide to use the recovery discs or the F11 option to restore the PC to its original condition, all partitions which were created by you will be lost and all the data which were stored on them will also be lost.
If there will be a problem and need to ask a question, it is required to start a new topic (make a post). Please write there details of the problem, your notebook product number (p/n) and which system are you using on this model (Windows 7, Windows 8, 32-bit or 64-bit).
Back to the top
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How can I dual-boot Windows 7 with pre-Installed Windows 8.1

Hi, I have a Toshiba Satellite C55-B5362 with pre-installed Windows 8.1.
Make DualBoot Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 (both 64 bit), so, I don't know how to do this. If I set BIOS to CMOS and Install Windows 7 disabling Secureboot, I will lost all the pre-installed Windows 8.1 and the OEM licence.
and other question... if the upper is not possible. Okay. I will delete Windows 8.1 and Install Windows 7 permanently until Windows 10 is released, but.... If I have Windows 7 with CMOS BIOS and SecureBoot disabled, then supposing that I could have problems with Windows 7, and I want to upgrade to Windows 8.1 again, and supposing that I have a Recovery Partition backed in a USB drive, what can I do for re-install OEM Windows 8.1 and the licence.
Thanks.
Solved!
Go to Solution.

As I said above...
..you will need to install essentially all of them to make that laptop work as designed.
..install the TVAP before any other Toshiba utility.
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TS: Pre-installed Windows 8.1 attempt to install windows 7.

Greeting,
I recently get a Dell laptop with pre-installed Windows 8.1, but I find out there are many compatibility issues on Windows 8.1. So I decided to install Windows 7 ultimate 64 bit into the system without wipe out the windows 8.1. I followed a lot of threads
through the web. I am be able to finally solve the GPT booting stuff and get into the installation page, BUT there is another problem comes up. I cannot find a solution on the internet. The installation cannot be started because there
is not enough required space for the window 7 to be installed.
I have 100 GB partition of free space for the window to installed, so I believe it is the
System Reserved Space that makes the problem. However, I have not find a way to resize it no matter I use the third party tool or not, because it is
GPT Style.
Is there any way that I could install window 7 without wipe out the window 8.1??
I really need to use the windows 7 since most of my software that I use is not compatible with windows 8.1.
Thanks
CK

I believe in theory you could install Win7 to a partition this way using an answer file. A problem would be that the OS won't boot if you deploy it using Setup by default. You would have to add a boot entry to the BCD for Win8.1 using BCDEdit, so that you
can have a dual-boot system.
What I would do instead is in Win 8.1 you can burn your recovery media. After doing so, you could do a clean install with Windows 7 and if needed you could reload Windows 8.1 using the recovery DVD.

Dual Boot Pre-Installed Windows 7 Computer with Enterprise linux

hello house, i have a system with pre-installed window7 and i want to load enterprise linux 5 as the second O.S,to have 2 operating systems on a Pc.how do i go about it?

First, carefully evaludate your motives for thinking dual-boot because just
install VirtualBox or VMWare to run OEL as a virtual guest requires little
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However, if your laptop does not support virtualization then dual
boot is the way to go:
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2) Use gparted to shrink your Win7 partition until you have
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3) Now, reboot using the OEL installation media.
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all partitions" choices. This is the critical step to get right
to keep your Win7 files from being deleted.
5) Proceed with default OEL install.
6) Install the GRUB bootloader to the MBR for the disk. GRUB will
then allow you to boot from either OEL or Win
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Dual booting pre-installed Windows 8 and Linux?

I just bought a G780 with Windows 8 pre-installed. Ideally, I would also like to install some flavor of Linux. I've been searching but not finding much info on how difficult or time-consuming this would be, or if there are any special considerations or anything. I've found some guides on dual-booting Windows 8 and Linux but they were all for installing Windows straight from a disk, not anything where it's already pre-installed, and some indicated they thought it might be problematic to use a pre-installed version of Windows. Anyway I was hoping that if anybody has done this on the G780 or even a similar laptop that you could share how it went and any difficulties you encountered. I'm open to using any Linux distro if it'll be easy to install. I would appreciate any info you could share. Thanks.

I had issues with Windows 8 as pre-installed on my G580, my employer at the time was using Windows 7 only and would not allow upgrades for security purposes. I deleted the entire drive (including hidden) knowing at some point I would re-install Windows 8 or later from retail disk when needed.
Linux can resize partitions during the install process, but be careful not to disturb the hidden partition or the windows boot loader in the process. Linux Mint is the best yet for this purpose, OpenSUSE and Fedora failed, CentOS failed and Ubuntu was not able to boot, but did not "hurt" the windows partitions.
Good luck.

INSTALL WINDOWS 7 OVER PRE-INSTALLED WINDOWS 8 LAPTOP

Hello everyone i am Raj
Q.
Anbody have worked with MBR AND GPT ?
is their anyway to install windows 7 on pre-installed windows 8 laptop from company .
problem is :-
1.)when you try to installed windows 7 it will say "windows cannot be installed on this disk because this disk is GPT partitioned .
2.)dilemma is that you cannot convert a partition in MBR but you can convert a whole disk .
3.)The recent UEFI support's windows 7 as a dual boot but that too x64 .
i have tried every possible solution that a Windows technician could do :D
NOTE :-
Important thing is that only C:\\ drive should be formatted in which we want's to install windows 7 and rest of the data of other drives must be safe
but still if any body get the job done PM me
My situation :-
i have formatted my c:\\ drive where i was having windows 8.1
i wanted it to be roll back to windows 7 Seriously but this problem does not allowing ME TO have that
and please don't suggest to have a clean install
:P
i will be eagerly waiting for the reply
if anybody get the job done please take a time and PM
ME AT
{removed PII}@hotmail.com

Hi,
I think it is quite difficult to install Windows 7 overriding the pre-installed Operation System without formatting the hard disk.
Because as you descripted in the post, your computer is booted with a UEFI firm ware, but your hard drive is not configured for UEFI mode, you cannot just convert one partition, you have to format the whole hard disk for
UEFI by using the GPT partition style, this lets your use the PC’s UEFI firmware feature, more details can be found at :
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-au/library/dn336946.aspx
All data should be backed up before you install Windows 7 to override the pre-installed Operation System.
Regards
Wade Liu
TechNet Community Support

HOW TO DUAL BOOT W540 with windows 8.1 / 7

I got my W540 recently with windows 8.1 pro on it. but as all engineers worst nightmare windows 8 has hard time with engineering softwares (for my case TIA Portal for PLC programming software which only support windows 7). so i need to have a windows 7. i prefer to keep my windows 8 and have dual boot system with windows 7 added. But i can't install windows 7. initially due to disk type (GPT), then i changed it to MBR without losing my files (which only was possible if i had deleted the recovery partition- now my recovery is on my flash drive). But there are already 4 partitions on the system (1 for C: drive and 3 for recovery and system files which came originally with the product) , how can i install a windows 7? i can't add another partition because that makes my disk a Dynamic disk (which i don't really know what is). all in all, i really need windows 7 on my system ASAP. If anyone know how to fix this please reply. Thanks guys.
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Go to Solution.

You are limited to four PRIMARY partitions on an MBR disk.
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Hi all,
At the moment I have Windows 7 32 bit OS. I've always wanted either an iMac, or atleast the Mac OS. I've recently found out it's only £20.99, and i've always thought it was a lot more than that, which is a bargain! The only thing which is stopping me from buying it at the moment, is that certain programs which I use reguarlarly won't work on Mac, and I really need those programs. Is their anyway I could dual-boot it with Windows 7, so I give Windows 7 say only 8gb of my hard drive, and Mac the rest?
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ryanroks1 wrote:
Thanks for helping
Is an Intel Mac just an Intel Processor, with Mac OS?
Yes Macs changed to Intel Processors in about 2007. You can upgrade as far as Lion with a Core2Duel Processor or better. CoreDuos will only update as far as Snow Leopard.
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Is there any way how i can download and run Window based games, with out installing Windows-thus Bootcamp? and if so, is it free?

is there any way how i can download and run Window based games, with out installing Windows-thus Bootcamp? and if so, is it free?

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I am getting the error:
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I read up some on google, but all of them says that they have crated a partition and that is the problem, I only have the standard "Macintosh HD".
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This message, and threads like yours got asked daily for over two years, now it is only a couple times a week!!
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When i try to use boot camp assistant to install windows 7 it sais an error has occured any help?

When i try to use boot camp assistant to install windows 7 it sais an error has occured any help?

Boot from another hard drive or DVD and repair with Disk Utility.

I have a HP Touchsmart Laptop. Can I uninstall Windows 7 and install windows 8.1 ?

I want to uninstall windows 7 and install windows 8.1 on my hp touchsmart. Will the touch features work on teh new installation?

Hi,
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