SOLVED Windows 10 Dual Boot with Windows 7

[RecumbentTim]

I was thinking of dual booting but ran into a problem immediately. Can I still do it if I see this:

 

[davidhk129]

I never saw that.
What if you manually enter the amount of volume to shrink, say, 20480 ( = 20 GB) ?
Will it accepts the input ?
If yes,
Does the box " Total size after shrunk " changes automatically ?

Perhaps, you should post the diskmgmt screenshot without the Shrink C overlay.

 

[RecumbentTim]

I typed that in but the Shrink button at the bottom is unclickable.

 

[davidhk129]

Please post the partitions screenshot.
I am sure the mods and the MVPs and other people will have better ideas than me.

 

[RecumbentTim]

Here it is:

 

[davidhk129]

I don't see anything out of the ordinary.
Sorry, I can't help.

 

[jmccleary50]

I think what you have run into is what I did in trying to make room for 10 in 7 drive space. 7 doesn't want to allow shrinkage for a myriad of reasons beyond me but someone on this forum turned me onto third party software which will do this. Download Mini Tool Partition Wizard and get familiar with it.

That worked for me. Hint: don't be misled that 10 only needs 20GB. I distinctly remember providing 100 GB and it is now shown 89% occupied.

A lot of my help came from this forum. It's just a matter of the right person seeing this.

I refer to my own efforts as floundering. If I can do double boot so can you.

 

[davidhk129]

Hint: don't be misled that 10 only needs 20GB. I distinctly remember providing 100 GB and it is now shown 89% occupied.

I am NOT trying to mislead him.

Have you noticed his machine has only 55GB ?

 

[jmccleary50]

That comment had absolutely nothing to do with anything you advised. It was based on my own experience with windows 10.

 

[davidhk129]

That comment had absolutely nothing to do with anything you advised. It was based on my own experience with windows 10.

OK. In that case, it's strange that you specified 20 GB which was what I suggested in one of my replies.

 

[davehc]

22Gb spare though. Should be enough, but personally, I would not feel comfortable with an OS on that amount of space.

 

[jmccleary50]

20GB was what everything I read recommended. All I was trying to point out was that what I was seeing indicated that might not be enough.

 

[RecumbentTim]

David, what is the status of your partition which contains Windows 10. I believe you have dual booted Windows 10 with Windows 8.1. Did you use 20 GB space to load it?

 

[davidhk129]

David, what is the status of your partition which contains Windows 10. I believe you have dual booted Windows 10 with Windows 8.1. Did you use 20 GB space to load it?

Not exactly.
I have one laptop dual booting Windows 10 Pro and Insider Preview build 10565.
It is an old Dell model pre-installed with Vista, with only 110 GB internal memory .
I allocated 40 GB for the Preview.

Long long ago with the same old laptop, I had used VM ( virtual machine player ? ) to install Win 8 Preview, and I allocated 20 GB for it, and it ran quite well, but I used it only for a short period of time and then I installed Win 8 Pro upgrade version over the existing OS.

 

[davidhk129]

Seriously speaking........
Look at your disk management .Your tablet has all together 55.36 GB AND only 40 % of that are free.
That's 21.99 GB free. How do you go about dual booting with less than 22 GB of free volume ?
Not a good idea at All.

 

[RecumbentTim]

Ok, I was thinking I would get a larger SSD. I will do that and proceed. In the meantime I am familiarizing myself with the Mini tool Partition Wizard.

 

[RecumbentTim]

I think what you have run into is what I did in trying to make room for 10 in 7 drive space. 7 doesn't want to allow shrinkage for a myriad of reasons beyond me but someone on this forum turned me onto third party software which will do this. Download Mini Tool Partition Wizard and get familiar with it.

Thank you for the Wizard.Please note that I am getting a bigger SSD (120 GB) In the meantime I want to familiarize myself with the Wizard (as you advised).

 

[davidhk129]

You have deleted your latest post.
I presume then that you have found the answer yourself.

 

[RecumbentTim]

Yes, I re sized the partition. It was quite easy with the Mini Partition Wizard. I re sized the main partition to the minimum but will enlarge it if prompted.

Thanks to jmccleary, davehc, and davidhk129 for once again providing the solution. The Youtube videos were helpful too.

 

[davidhk129]

Do you know you need to format the new partition to NTFS ?