Dual Boot Win8 OEM, Win7 OEM SUBJECT /Purpose: Adding Win7 to a EXISTING WIN8 OEM install , (Win8 being pre-installed by OEM, HP which uses the GPT partitioning scheme, along with "Recovery" partition(s) ) WITHOUT HAVE TO WIPE THE DRIVE CLEAN. Reason for being wordy is while I hope I can get some assistance on "my" problem, I hope this thread might help someone else who's searching later. I have found VERY little info about adding WINDOWS 7 to a WINDOWS 8 OS install, and even LESS info about adding WIN7 to a OEM WIN8 OS install preinstalled by the OEM. All the threads I've run across are about adding WIN8 to a WIN7 install, Or stating that you have to wipe the hard drive clean and start all over. Hello all, confused on a couple of things. I've spent more hours than I care to admit researching the below. At this point I'm chasing my tail. As I have no interest in "Win8" pretty much this doesn't help. Situation: Elderly parents purchased a HP Laptop with Win8 x64 Core on it. Stepmother got all excited reading about Win8.... and is unable to use it. Because of this I want to "upgrade" them to a OS they can use (And that I can help them with). I would prefer setting it up as a DUAL BOOT (Win8/Win7), 2nd option is straight Win7. I have backed up the MSDM keys, Extracted OS build /type info (Core/English). I and familiar with changing the OS sku from Win8 to Win7 to make the Win7 install validate properly using OEM Win7 key. I have a 8.1 iso image and have "read" you can do a fresh install with a generic OEM key, then inject the MSDM key extracted from the install once OS is installed. (Is this correct? Most info states you have to have 8.0 iso which is not available freely.) I'm wondering if changing the sku will deactivate the current Win8 install. In other words once the OS is activated does the OS check the bios after that. I've searched high and low- nobody can verify if the OEM install will freak out after toggling the sku to Win7. I would assume the OS does, would be nice if it didn't as it would allow setting up a dual-boot. (My stepmother is the type if I was to wipe clean Win8 and do a straight Win7 install, even if she couldn't use Win8 she might hold it against me if it was "gone". Hence why a dual-boot is preferable.) ******************** Has anyone been successful in doing a Dual-Boot Win8/Win7 as I describe? All the posts I've read were focused on just wiping Win8 off the machine totally, sku in bios being set for Win7 so Win7 would validate. If so next question will be about if the "Hidden" MBR which is within the EFI? "GPT" partition (Or elsewhere) can be reset without re-installing Win8 so the Win8 and Win7 will boot properly. In the bios. Secure boot is disabled. CSM Mode is ON Dual Booting is a COMMON practice, With 90% of Win8 PC's being shipped with the OS pre-installed and pretty much all you can get on consumer PC's is "Win8" which alot of people don't like, OR they need Win7 to run their apps I am amazed at the lack of any concessions, or considerations, forthought Microsoft and the OEM's have put into making adding Win7 to a Win8 OEM install. You'd think the process would go something like: Stick your 2-3 yr old Win7 install media into DVD drive while in the Win8 OS. You run SETUP on the disc if it doesn't automatically come up, Win8 detects the media and asks you what you want to do. You click INSTALL. Win8 reboots the computer, setup runs and at the completion of setup it asks you want OS you want as the default OS... and you're DONE. Partitioning software can be run from within the OS, you select what operations you want to do and it reboots the machine adding the correct parameters. Why can't Microsoft and the OEM's have a app that detects Win7 install media, and install it? WIPE ALL the PARTITIONS off the drive to install Win7? What happens if the files within the "hidden mbr", or whatever becomes corrupted in a Win8 install and you have data on the drive? Seems like they would have a app that does as in the old days that scans the hard drive for a prior OS and adds it. Appreciate any thoughts on the subject. .
You have a lot of things mentioned, but to help you we need to know exactly what you are trying to do. If I understand correctly, you want to: Dual-boot win7 (unspecified sku) sp1 and win8.1 core (single language perhaps?) x64 versions. You have concerns about installing the win7 oem info into the bios, but want to also be able to have the win8.1 use your legit 8.0 activation. About the partitioning, you can do what's called a partition shrinking. Go into diskmgmt.msc and right click on the c-drive's partition and try to shrink it. If it lets you shrink it enough to have at least 15 gigs, you should be good enough to install win7; though I would recommend giving it 100 gigs if you can, so default program install locations don't have to be modified. After shrinking the partition, boot a win7 install media. Install to the un-partitioned space left by the shrink. After install, the boot screen will be oldschool text mode to choose between OS versions, but you can change that back to the win8 graphical one. Go into win8 and run admin prompt. navigate to windows\system32 and do a bcdboot c:\windows (from win8) Then go into advanced system settings and change the default boot item and timeout settings to whatever you prefer. (10 seconds win8 default or whatever) On the activation end, I don't know what to tell you... You could try using winloader, but I don't know if it would work with the dual-boot getup (it might be able to install the key to the bios, but I am not sure) If you get stuck and cannot figure out how to get win7 activated, you can always delete the partition and install enterprise or pro and use MTK to activate it.
what if my current partition scheme is gpt(oem deafault setting),when i shrink/made a new partiton,and tried booting win 7 in bios mode it wont let me install the os,it says gpt scheme not supported?
The safest way I'd go for in your situation, and as murphy stated, is to install Windows 7 Professional or Entreprise edition for the fact you can activate them via KMS with Cody's tool: Microsoft toolkit, look here : forums.mydigitallife. info/threads/28669-Microsoft-Toolkit-Official-KMS-Solution-for-Microsoft-Products (without the space in front of "info" and sorry I cannot post links yet) The second thing is you won't have to alter anything in your bios, so your setup remains intact and so does Win8.0 activation. just one thing, you have to make your installation media EFI bootable, and this is by just extracting the ISO content into a media with FAT32 file system, or use Rufus and choose GPT in patition scheme.
Win7 supports gpt and efi. The problem is in your winpe\boot.wim you are booted in mbr\bios mode and not efi. You maybe have to select efi boot in bios. If using usb you would need the DVD:\efi\boot\bootx64.efi file for it to boot\be found.
Win7 supports gpt partitioned drives, but it doesn't like the way that win8 partitions them. I speculate it has something to do with win8 creating a recovery partition first before the system partition. 7 doesn't seem to do that. There's a way to convert gpt drives to mbr partitioned versions... You might not have to do that though... You could try applying the win7 image directly to the win7 partition. You may or may not need to mount the system volume to do a bcdboot so that you could finish making it bootable. as far as the actual bcdboot command, try running win7 setup disc after applying the windows 7 image to the win7 partition and then do a shift-f10 to bring up command prompt then navigate to the win7's windows\system32 folder and try doing: bcdboot x:\windows (where x: is your win7 partition) If that doesn't work you might need to mount the system volume and point the bcdboot at it... I'm sorry I don't have experience doing that myself... refer to google search for further info if it doesn't work without mounting the system volume If you don't want to go through all these hassles, you can simply reformat the entire drive and install win7 first before win8. It will automatically change the partition scheme to mbr if you run setup from a normal boot device and not one labeled "UEFI:"
Are you sure you are booted in EFI mode in the win7pe\boot.wim. You use Rufus to make your Win7 USB. Does USB:\efi\boot\bootx64.efi exist or not? If the efi boot file is missing it won't boot efi. If it does exist, are you choosing to boot from the efi partition on the USB? Windows will only install to GPT in EFI mode. I just noticed your partitioning scheme is "non-standard" with OEM partitioning so this will prove to be more difficult. If it comes down to you choosing to reformat and start from scratch, perhaps try deploying the install.wim with dism or imagex to the desired drive, and then add a bcd entry for it. You can install Win7 from the Win8 boot.wim, but you would need to add the license files in sources from win7.
take a look here..might give you some ideas .. eightforums.com/tutorials/13326-downgrade-windows-8-windows-7-a.html
From what i see , if you check that Secure Boot is disabled , make partition for win7 within win8 management..you just need to do a uEFI win7 install. No need to delete any of the partitions. If you get an error about partitions being out of order , you can ignore. win8 front page has option of what os to default boot.
Secure boot is disabled, set to false. Bios detects and boots uEFI media. RE: If you get an error about partitions being out of order , you can ignore. That warning message in the partitions being out of order is unsettling. (Using Win7 with SP1 already integrated, so you'd think setup would be Win8 "aware", more importantly it would be coded so OEM partitioning schemes would not be a issue.) I'd like to be able to ignore the message, but from everything I've read on adding Win7 to a EXISTING Win8 OEM install is the partitions being out of order is "problematic" in that Win7 won't boot, Win8 won't boot, upon conclusion the system looping. (Something like that) On that warning message I'd feel a whole lot better about if I was reading post after post about people being SUCCESSFUL in adding Win7 to a existing OEM Win8 install in a non-destructive manner. EG: Not touching the existing Win8 install. You sure about that error message being a non-issue? Surely there must be a way to add Win7 to the bootloader. .