In my opinion there is no reason why users should wait a few months for Windows 7 to bed in before upgrading, or for Windows 7 SP1 to be released as the product is good to use now. I’ve been using the Windows 7 RTM build on all my machines as my main OS for a few months now without any issues at all.
But, there are some people who will want to be more cautious and not fully leave Windows Vista or XP behind. If you have a big enough Hard Drive, then you can create a new disk partition to install Windows 7, so that when you start your machine you will be given the option of choosing Windows 7 or your older (inferior) OS. This is also a way to ensure you don’t delete any old files until you are sure Windows 7 is working fully.
To create a New Disk Partition to Dual Boot Windows 7:
- Open Control Panel and go to Administrative Tools and then Computer Management
- Click on Disk Management (under Storage). In order to install Windows 7 you need to shrink one of your existing disk partitions to make room for Windows 7 – I recommend freeing up at least 40GB
- Right-click on your biggest partition and click on Shrink Volume. In the popup window enter the amount you want to shrink the disk by in the ‘Enter the amount of space to shrink in MB’. Remember 1GB is roughly 1000MB, so enter 40000 if you want to create a 40GB partition
- After you’ve done this, ‘Unallocated’ space will appear in Computer Management. Right-click on this space and select ‘New Simple Volume’. this will create your new partition
- To install Windows 7 to your new partition just boot your PC with the Windows 7 installation disk, and install it to the new partition.
- Once finished, when you boot your PC you will be given a choice of which OS to boot into
If in the future you want to delete one of the OSs, just follow the instructions above, but in Computer Management delete the unwanted partition and then right click on an existing partition and choose Extend Volume to add the freed up space.
