[How To] Create Dual Boot Of Windows 7 And Windows 8

Microsoft has released Windows 8 Developer Preview and many of you had downloaded in your computer but haven’t install it because you don’t wanna install and dev version over your stable OS.

Well its right as Windows 8 is currently in developing stage and its not recommended that you use it as your primary OS as it has to go long way and many changes will be made before it final version.

So how to try it out? The best way is to create a dual boot of your existing OS and Windows 8.

Here we assume that you had Windows 7 installed on your system and had downloaded Windows 8 Developer Preview version. If you haven’t downloaded it yet then download it from HERE.

Now either burn it to a DVD or make a USB drive bootable. Now let get started.

First make a back up of your important data, now we need to get a drive where we will install our Windows 8, for this :-

    Create New Partition

    Click on Start button then right click on Computer and select Manage,

• Now click on the Disk Management option from Left Sidebar,
• Now right click on any of the drive in which you had at lest 20GB of free space and then click on Shrink Volume,

• Now free up 20 GB of space,
• Now you will see another option coming as Unallocated space,
• Right click on I and select option New Simple Volume and then click Next and Next when you see option Format Partition,
• Just provide a name to your new partition and then click Next to format it.

Install Windows 8

• Now you had New Partition space and you are ready to install your new OS,
• Insert your DVD or attach your USB to your computer and boot computer from them,
• Installation of Windows 8 is very much similar to as of Windows 7, select your language, make sure we are going to do a custom installation of Windows 8,
• When it ask for partition where it wanna install Windows 8 select the partition we created above, if you select any other then you might loose your data.
• Now grab a coffee and let Installer do its work and it will reboot your computer one or two times,
• Once installation is done then it will show your Windows 8 Start Screen.

Make Windows 7 As Default

You don’t want to boot in Windows 8 by default as you don’t have much data on it and its not your primary OS, So when you first boot in Windows 8 you will find a graphical interface saying Choose An Operating System,

At the bottom of that page you will see an option saying Change Default Option, click on it and then click on Choose Default OS and then select your Windows 7 as default one.
That’s It Enjoy booting from 2 Windows.