Dual Boot Windows 7 And XP: Windows 7 Installation Without A LiveDVD

[bochiman]

Windows 7 is easy to install directly from your current Windows operating system. This article describe the detailed steps that must be performed in order to install Windows 7 directly from Windows XP without a Live DVD. You just have to mount the ISO on a virtual CD ROM and run the Windows 7 installer.

The best part is that you will be able to dual boot both Windows operating systems at the computer start up. You will not loose any data and even more, all applications installed in your current Windows operating system will work in Windows 7 without the need to reinstall them: just create shortcuts on your Windows 7 desktop or taskbar. :D

[ɹəuəllıʍ ʇɐb]

The best part is that you will be able to dual boot both Windows operating systems at the computer start up. You will not loose [sic] any data and even more, all applications installed in your current Windows operating system will work in Windows 7 without the need to reinstall them: just create shortcuts on your Windows 7 desktop or taskbar. :D

I highly doubt that, but I am going to test that (from my Virtual PC installation).

[bochiman]

The best part is that you will be able to dual boot both Windows operating systems at the computer start up. You will not loose [sic] any data and even more, all applications installed in your current Windows operating system will work in Windows 7 without the need to reinstall them: just create shortcuts on your Windows 7 desktop or taskbar. :D

I highly doubt that, but I am going to test that (from my Virtual PC installation).

It is perfectly functional the recipe provided: we have been looking for the simplest solution to install Windows 7 for testing directly from a hard drive (not in a virtual machine) and in the same time to have the possibility to implement a dual boot. First idea that has came was UNetbootin, but this method does not worked out (maybe from the reason of the type of ISO - DVD and not CD).

Anyway, if you have a free partition with enough space (at least 8 GB will take Windows 7 installation), I think it worth to try to convince yourself that this is possible. Even more, all applications from XP can be used from Windows 7 without the need to reinstall them: just make shortcuts to them.

The first impression make you think is faster, but if you are going to use it for a while, in certain cases the RAM consumption is higher as compared with Windows XP. But we should not rush affirmations: it is still beta.

Another problem that you might have (depending on your network) the automatic network setup mechanism does not work well. As a consequence, you will have to setup it manually.