How to switch between Windows 8 and Windows 7

Share This Article

In this article we will tell you how to switch between Windows 8 and Windows 7. Here you will get to know how to install Windows 8 keeping your previous OS intact.

Let’s say your computer runs on Windows 7 or Windows XP currently and you also wish to install Windows 8 alongside, so that you can run and switch between both the operating systems. No problem, you can do it anyday. But how ?

In this article, you can find how to install Windows 8 keeping your previous operating system intact, and how can you switch between both the operating systems.

Lets first see how to install the second operating system on your computer.

Requirements

Your computer must fulfil the following requirements-

1. Minimum 30 GB free disk space.

2. 2-4GB Ram.

Lets Start

First of all, we need a separate partition on your computer hard disk for Windows 8. Right click on your My computer, and click on ‘Manage’. On the Computer Management Window, Click ‘Disk Management’. You would see a Window like shown below:

Now choose the partition with maximum disk space. Right click the partition and select ‘shrink volume’.

As soon as you click on Shrink Volume, it will start querying shrink space. Now enter the amount of space for the new partition on the next Window. Size between 20-30 GB would be fine. Put size according to this: 1GB= 1024MB , in the field which says ‘Put the amount of space to shrink in MB’.

This will create a separate unallocated partition of specified size. Right click on the unallocated partition and select ‘ New Simple Volume’. On the ‘New Simple Volume’ wizard, let the volume size remain the same as default, allot the new drive name. Now, format the same drive using ‘NTFS’ format.

That’s it. Now that you’ve build the house, its time to get house member in. Lets see how to place Windows 8 inside the unallocated disk partition. Follow the instructions given below :

1. Insert the Windows 8 bootable disc in the disc drive.

2. If your machine cannot boot the cd automatically, you need to change boot settings in BIOS mode. To do this , keep pressing F2 button while your PC restarts. This will get you into BIOS mode.

3. In the BIOS settings, go to Advance boot options and put ‘CD-ROM’ as first boot device priority.

4. Save the changes and exit from the BIOS. Your PC will restart automatically.

5. You will see a message saying ‘ Press any key to boot from CD or DVD’. Press Enter (or any key) to start the Windows installation.

6. Now just follow the instruction guide to set up Windows 8. Make sure you when you are ask to choose the partition on which Windows 8 is to be installed, you select the same partition you created earlier and not the partition on which previous Windows resides.

7. Installation can take from minutes to hours and also your computer will restart couple of times during the installation.

Thats it. You’ve successfully install Windows 8 on your Computer.