Hello all, I've been using Windows 7 for the last 8 years or so and haven't had any issues with it and was only planning on trying Win 10 when a game required it. With Forza Horizon 3 only a few weeks away, I want to dual boot Win 10 with my current Win 7. So I plan on creating another partition on my 256GB SSD and installing a fresh barebones Win 10 that I'd be using likely only for DX12/Win10 games on that new partition. My SSD currently has 2 partitions: System Reserve 100MB (System, Active, Primary Partition) C: 232.79GB (Boot, Page File, Crash, Primary Partition) If I partition C: into another partition for Win 10 and install Win 10 on that new partition, will I have any dual boot issues with that other System Reserve partition that I need to worry about? I've been looking into which Win 10 version I should try and I've settled on the following: en_windows_10_enterprise_2016_ltsb_n_x64_dvd_9057894.iso (And I use "KMS_VL_ALL - Smart Activation Script" after installation correct?) I need the SSD space footprint to be as small as possible, so I plan on giving about ~50-60GB of that separate partition for the game/s, and I'm not sure how much space I need to also reserve for the OS. Would a 80GB partition be ok? I plan on setting my Pagefile to 1024MB min/2048MB max like I do on Win 7 to save space. I have never had an issue with this pagefile size on Win 7 (machine has 16GB RAM). Should I have any concerns for doing the same thing on Win 10? I know LTSB N comes pretty barebones, but are there any other packages I can remove to save more HD space? Any guides of which packages are safe to remove? I know I need to add the Windows Store for Forza Horizon 3. I already have the thread link on how to add the Store back to LTSB. Again, for now I'll only be using Win 10 for DX12/Win10 only games and Chrome/Firefox. Any other concerns I should have? Thank for any help.
If you already have a System Reserved partition, Win 10 will just use that... My opinion---don't remove packages...everything works well and no errors that way... OO Shut Up does a great job disabling the telemetry... Instead of LTSB, go for Education---store support, no Cortana and newer features... A partition of 60 GB is more than sufficient to run 3 of the modern games... 2 gb pagefile works fine for me... I don't game but I do screen records at 1920 x 1080 for about 2 hrs at a stretch without issues...
Why LTSB instead of LTSB N? I thought the 'N' meant stripped of media features that I wouldn't need. What would the non N version offer me for better gaming? "Features" is something I don't want. Barebones is my ideal OS. If I need something, I'll add it manually. This ISO I have is the Anniversary Update build from less than a month ago, so it should be pretty up to date? 60GB seems a little low for the entire partition no? With some modern PC games reaching towards 50GB (Preload for Forza Horizon 3 on Xbox One I hear is around ~45GB). 60GB seems like it would leave for little "wiggle" room.
Why, when you need the Store? Nothing to worry, because you won't get another "system reserved" partition. That partition is where the boot manager is, and you only need one instance of it to boot into either Windows 7 or Windows 10. You don't necessarily have to repartition to dual-boot though since you could also do VHD boot. I'm sure T-S will be in here soon and tell you all about it, along with a recommendation for Vivaldi.
I know nothing about VHD. What's wrong with just partitioning through Disk Management? Quick and simple enough. I did notice I installed Windows 7 on a MBR partition instead of GPT for some reason. I looked into converting MBR to GPT while retaining data and it seems most people don't recommend doing that. I'll probably just leave the drive MBR. Slightly faster boot speed it seems is all I would get out of GPT. Alright, well I already have LTSB N on a bootable flash drive ready to go. It seems I can just install the Media Feature Pack after from /kb/3133719 (can't link yet, sorry) if I need to get the N functionality stuff back.