How to Dual Boot Windows 8 and 7 clean installation without DVD easily

If you think Installing Windows 8 overwriting current installation wouldn’t be a good idea then Dual Booting it with Current Windows 7 is a perfect alternative. Even Windows 8 in Virtual Environment won’t give that good experience so, follow this guide to easily install dual boot Windows 8 without need of DVD.

Windows 8 Dual Boot Installation Requirements

You need Windows 8 ISO Image and Virtual CD / DVD Drive installed on Computer. This can be done with software like Virtual CD, Daemon Tools, Magic ISO or anything similar which supports mounting ISO CD Images.

Create Hard Disk Partition for Windows 8 Installation

First of all, make a separate Hard Disk Partition for Windows 8 installation.

Go to Disk Managenemt. Right Click on My Computer and click on Manage >> Disk Management.

Find any Hard Disk Partition with more than 25GB space free. Right click on it and Shrink. Enter the amount to shrink in MB = 20480 (20 GB is minimum requirement of Windows

Shrink Existing HDD Partition

Click on newly created unallocated space of size 20GB and create new Simple Volume.

New Simple Volume Wizard will open. Keep the File system as NTFS and Give name as “Windows 8″ which will make recognizing easier at later stage. Don’t forget to check on Quick Format.

Create New Partition for Windows 8

Now, Partition has been created and we are ready to install Windows 8 on it.

Install Windows 8

Mount Windows 8 ISO Image – In my case, I have use Magic ISO which supports Mounting ISO from Tray icon. As soon as Mounting is successful, Autorun will start but close it.

Mount Windows 8 ISO

Open the DVD and navigate to /Sources folder where you will find Setup.exe

Run the Setup and Select to make “Custom Installation” instead of Upgrading current installation. This installs a fresh copy of Windows 8.

When asked “Where to Install Windows 8” Select the Partition which you created in above steps and Press Next.

Select Windows 8 Installation Partition

Installation begins with copying of files and then Computer will automatically restart. On Reboot, Loader will give two options- Windows Setup and Windows 7. Select “Windows Setup” and Press Enter to continue with Setup.

Installer is straight forward with clean GUI and more similar to Windows 7. That’s it!

First boot will take time which will include configuring Devices and Drivers (Network, Sound, etc)

Enter Windows Live ID to enter and you are ready to experience the awesomeness of Windows 8. You can read more about Windows 8 Experience.

Posted in: Windows, Windows 8