Farewell to Win 7
Farewell to Win 7
I currently use a basic 2 quad setup with a potato gt 730 (upgraded from a 9400 gt). It runs on Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit and Vista Ultimate 64-bit with 7 GB RAM (which is a bit unusual: 2 + 2 + 2 + 1 GB DDR2). I plan to switch to Windows 10 the same day support ends for both Windows 7 and Vista. My main concern is whether dual booting Windows 10, Windows 7, and Windows 10 on the same machine will cause any issues. Also, could Windows 10 affect both of my previous installations? Thanks for reading this. Edit: Please don’t tell me Vista is bad, it was great for me. — Void Master
August 21, 2019
Vista worked well after the system caught up and the updates were applied. Remember, Windows 9 still exists. You don’t have to upgrade immediately.
To triple boot Vista, 7, and 10, keep your hard drives connected and avoid altering the boot sequence. This ensures 10 installs and joins the existing boot options. He can detach the drives, switch 10 onto an SSD, and set it as the primary boot device, but must use BCDEdit to add entries for Vista and 7 afterward.
If you are ok with running non-supported OS's why even bother with Windows 10? Just stay on 7 if you don't care about security. Vista has been out of support for over 2 years now, installing Windows 10 because Windows 7 is going out of support seems kind of dumb when you look at it that way.
The problem lies with either your motherboard or your configuration. When setting up Windows, it will choose the first drive listed on the first SATA port it detects (typically the first one not labeled as an optical drive). If you have both an HDD and an SSD, and you wish to make the SSD your main drive, but placed the HDD on SATA-1 and the SSD on SATA-2... Windows will install Windows on the SSD according to your selection, even though the boot sector remains on the HDD. This behavior isn’t just about compatibility with BIOS/UEFI; it’s also influenced by how certain motherboards prioritize specific connections.
Some motherboards favor SATA drives over M.2 ones, especially when you have multiple ports available. I remember a Gigabyte board from a past system where the IDE port was still common for HDDs despite SATA-2 being standard, while SATA-3 was gaining popularity. It seems that even with a powerful CPU like an i7-860, the system would default to the older IDE port if it was available.
This issue can also stem from outdated hardware choices. In the past, many systems still used IDE connectors for HDDs, even when SATA ports were standard. Connecting SSDs to SATA might have caused Windows to install on the SSD by default, not because of any BIOS requirement, but simply due to the setup you chose.
@GoodBytes : Are you certain about that priority and boot loader? I used to believe Windows simply relies on the existing boot loader, regardless of which drive it's on, rather than creating a new one. That’s why people often end up using the boot loader on an HDD when they install a new SSD, since the old boot loader gets updated.
You might consider using Virtual Machines within Windows 10 instead of installing directly on Windows 7 and Vista from the start. This approach could save time and avoid the need to set up a new OS in the VM. Others here likely have similar experiences.
Thanks for your assistance. I managed to resolve the issue. Updating Windows 10 is happening, but I’ll be using this PC mostly for fun or emergencies. If my Vista HDDs don’t fail soon (hopefully), I’m planning to clone them onto SSDs (I can afford two more Kingston A400s). Will this affect the installation if I keep the boot order the same? Yes, by cloning a full backup including all partitions. Thanks for your help!