Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years.

Thanks,

CNET Support

Question

Secondary OS to choose at startup

Nov 28, 2015 12:13AM PST
During startup of Win 10, the options given to proceed with include Windows 10 and System Restore.
I now have Win 10 on one of my laptop's internal 2.5" HDD. And I've restored to Win 7 (home premium) on my other 2.5" HDD that sometimes is temporarily in the bay of the internal drive that Win 10 is now running on.
With one of those drives in the 2.5" usb HDD enclosure, how can give the Win 10 startup window an optional link that can open and run Win 7 of the plugged in enclosure. IOW, can the startup screen be tweaked so that I can avoid temporarily putting the Win 7 HDD in the internal bay in place of the 2.5" drive that Win 10 runs on (to run Win 7 on the external drive)?

-David

Discussion is locked

- Collapse -
Answer
first of all
Nov 28, 2015 12:30AM PST

if the win 7 was the original os before upgrading and it was used to justify the win10 upgrade, then according to microsofts license you cannot use it any more.

- Collapse -
Answer
ren covers why it usually fails.
Nov 28, 2015 10:16AM PST

I've only found one person that paid for the new 10 license so they could dual boot. Most folk surrender the old Windows license.

- Collapse -
Answer
I know of no way to run any version of Windows from external
Nov 28, 2015 11:03AM PST

USB connected drives. It's possible that some 3rd party thing exists to make that possible, but if so, I haven't heard about it. Since it's external, it would likely be slow even if you could get it to work. One thing that might work would be an eSATA connection, since these look to the computer like internal drives. Of course if you get around the technical problems, there are the legal ones others have written about.
`
Good luck.

- Collapse -
Answer
Use the windows 10 ISO file
Nov 28, 2015 11:52AM PST

Just have the drive you want to use installed. Boot to the DVD for win10 install and install it. Since you have already installed it once on that computer, it should work OK. You can then use BIOS boot option to choose which one to boot.