Dual boot

[#1]

I can't get over preferring Win 7 to Win 10. I have no wish to start a discussion between the two but...

I have two laptops one with upgrade Win 7 (can't remember what it started life as but may have been XP) and another fairly newish with installed Win 10 from new.

I have no less that three copies of upgrade Win 7 discs all home premium and all registered to me.

Can I dual boot the Win 10 machine with Win 7?

I realise there could be registration problems. I do know which of the Win 7 discs goes with which machine, of the oldest of the discs the computer is no longer in use having gone to that great recycle bin in the sky (I removed the hard disc before scrapping it)

I also realise the Win 7 disc is an upgrade, but I have a cunning plan, I also have a full XP disc, can I initially install this as a dual boot and then upgrade that to Win 7?

Should I run into any serious problems, is it likely that Microsoft will recognise I'm using a different computer to that on which the Win 7 was originally upgraded on?

[#2]

Other than potential registration problems I can't see any reason why you can't dual boot Win7 / 10.

Like you I run (and prefer) Win7 but couldn't resist the free upgrade offer to Win10 from Microsoft. Following advice found on-line I downloaded a full Win10 installation disk and installed as a dual boot. Did it on a separate hard drive so I've future proofed the PC in terms of operating system and have a back up system if my Win7 SSD fails.

Brian

[#3]

Thanks bmc.

It is anticipated problems with registration I think will be my biggest issue. Most likely a different motherboard will reject it.

However, I spotted this on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Microsoft-Windows-Home-Premium-English/dp/B00H09BB16/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid...

It has very good reviews, for £29 it might be worth a try. It is though restricted to 64bit, but that's not a problem for the laptop I'm considering putting it on.

[#4]

If you're happy mucking about with hard drive partitions (I cheated and used a separate hard drive!!!) then you can't loose anything by trying your current disks.

Just remember to do a full back up before you start!!!

Brian

[#5]

Seems good value, but..."Won't allow for a change to a different model motherboard once installed"....Seems a bit odd to me. What happens if motherboard fails for some reason?

[#6]

OEM versions of Windows are cheaper because they are tied to the motherboard. They are not intended to be sold as standalone software.

[#7]

yet there are so many oem disks on ebay...

To be honest dual booting is a thing of the past in my eyes unless you have limited ram. Running virtual machines is the better way forward and also far easier for backing up too as you can just copy the entire VM.