Dual boot win 7 & 8 questions

glynf

Hi all, I need a bit of advice on the above.

I have a Samsung series 9 laptop that came with win 8 64 bit installed, on a SanDisk SSD U100 SMG2 128GB MSATA drive. I need win 7 for work, but want to keep win 8 as well. The laptop does not have a DVD drive, nor do I have an external one. It has a recovery partition to re-install windows 8, and does not come with any re-installation disc/media.

My plan is to upgrade the SSD to 256GB Crucial M4 mSATA, re-install 8 using a different win 8 disc, re-using the license key on the back of the laptop. During the win 8 set up I will a create a 2 partitions-the first for win 8 and the second(about 90 GB), I will install win 7 to later on.

I plan to use an 8 Gb USB disk to To install both OS', this is the guide I had in mind for 8 -this one for 7.

I have a full copy of 7, so no issues there.

Thing is, where do I download the win 8 ISO on the MS website without buying another copy?
Will a downloaded ISO be compatible with the product key of my laptop(it did not come with a sticker with the product key so had to use Belarc advisor to find it )?

Is there an easier way/better online guides to do the above?

Anything else obvious I'm missing here?

Thanks in advance.

Eboggles

glynf wrote: »

Hi all, I need a bit of advice on the above.

I have a Samsung series 9 laptop that came with win 8 64 bit installed, on a SanDisk SSD U100 SMG2 128GB MSATA drive. I need win 7 for work, but want to keep win 8 as well. The laptop does not have a DVD drive, nor do I have an external one. It has a recovery partition to re-install windows 8, and does not come with any re-installation disc/media.

My plan is to upgrade the SSD to 256GB Crucial M4 mSATA, re-install 8 using a different win 8 disc, re-using the license key on the back of the laptop. During the win 8 set up I will a create a 2 partitions-the first for win 8 and the second(about 90 GB), I will install win 7 to later on.

I plan to use an 8 Gb USB disk to To install both OS', this is the guide I had in mind for 8 -this one for 7.

I have a full copy of 7, so no issues there.

Thing is, where do I download the win 8 ISO on the MS website without buying another copy?
Will a downloaded ISO be compatible with the product key of my laptop(it did not come with a sticker with the product key so had to use Belarc advisor to find it )?

Is there an easier way/better online guides to do the above?

Anything else obvious I'm missing here?

Thanks in advance.

I had a tonne of trouble trying to do a clean install of Windows 8 on a laptop when I upgraded to an SSD. There is no actual ISO available to just download from Microsoft, and there's no product key on the bottom of your laptop, either; it just has a Win8 sticker. So, I had to buy a new Windows 8 just for my SSD . However, I was able to pick it up for €15 euro using the upgrade offer that doesn't require validation .

However, that's gone now so I'm not sure what you're going to do. You're going to have to partition your SSD in another computer and split it up into two parts, and allocate one for each OS. Then, install Win7 on one, and use your newly bought Win 8 DVD to install Win 8 on the other partition?

MS really ballsed up the no-ISO thing, though .

glynf

Hey Eboggles, thanks for the reply & heads up. Other option is I have a DVD copy of Win 8 64 bit 'DSP OEI' (which AFAIK is the same as an OEM copy of Win 7) that is installed on my desktop, might try and install that to the new SSD using an external DVD drive, and try my existing Win 8 key-I ran Belarc Advisor to find it-handy little program BTW. I will keep the existing mSATA just in case it all goes horribly wrong-not that that could happen with good 'ol MS..