If you've ever dual booted a machine before, this shouldn't seem too foreign. All you need to do is create a new partition for Windows 8, install it on that partition, and then edit your new boot menu so Windows 7 stays the default OS. Here's how to do it.
Step One: Create a New Partition
Before you start, make a backup of your data—you're going to be formatting drives and installing OSes, so anything could go wrong, and you don't want to lose your whole system. When you're ready, we'll need to create some space for Windows 8 on your hard drive. Assuming you have at least 20GB of space free on your drive, you're going to use Windows' Disk Management to set partition those 20GB for Windows 8. Open the Start Menu and right click on the "Computer" option. Click "Manage", and in the window that appears, click on "Disk Management" in the left sidebar.
Find your system hard disk in the graphical list that appears in the bottom pane. Right-click on it and then click "Shrink Volume". Shrink it down so you have at least 20GB of space left on the end of the drive, and click OK. Then, click on the "Unallocated" block of that drive that appears and click "New Simple Volume". Click Next on the next few windows until you get to the "Format Partition" window. Here, give it a volume label you'll recognize (like "Windows 8") and click Next. It should format the drive for you. Now you're all set to install Windows 8.
Step Two: Install Windows 8
If you haven't downloaded the Developer Preview ISO yet, head over to the Windows Developer Center and download it. Burn it onto a DVD using something like ImgBurn, or burn it to a thumb drive if you don't have a DVD drive in your machine. Make sure your computer is set to boot from CD or USB, stick in your installation media, and reboot.
If you get a prompt to "Press any key to boot from DVD", then hit a key on your keyboard. You should boot right into the Windows 8 installer. It actually looks almost exactly like the Windows 7 installer, so it should seem a little familiar. Just pick your language, hit "Install Now", and choose "Custom" when asked what type of install you'd like to perform.
On the next screen, find your new partition on the list of drives. Make sure it's the right one, because you're about to write over whatever's on it. Hit "Next" and let the installer do its thing. When you're done, your computer should reboot into Windows 8. It'll probably reboot one more time after it does, then you'll be greeted with the Windows 8 Start screen. If you choose to enter a Windows Live ID here, make sure you have access to your email and can confirm your computer—otherwise it might not let you boot into it.
Step Three: Make Windows 7 the Default (Optional)
You'll notice when you first boot up into Windows 8 that you're presented with a new graphical boot menu that'll let you choose between your Windows 7 and Windows 8 installations. Windows 8 will be the default, meaning if you don't manually choose Windows 7 from the menu, your computer will boot into Windows 8 after three seconds of inactivity. Chances are, you don't want to make Windows 8 the default quite yet, so here's how to make Windows 7 the default.
On the boot menu, click on the button at the bottom that says "Change Defaults or Choose Other Options", and hit "Choose the Default Operating System". From there, you can pick Windows 7 from the menu. From now on, your computer will boot into Windows 7 by default, but if you feel like playing around with Windows 8 that day, you can just pick it from the boot menu. Enjoy playing with the developer preview, and let us know what you think in the comments.
You can contact Whitson Gordon, the author of this post, at whitson@lifehacker.com. You can also find him on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and lurking around our #tips page.
Source: http://lifehacker.com/5840387/how-to-dual+boot-windows-7-and-windows-8-side-by-side
Windows 8 Consumer Preview: Dual Boot with Windows 7
As with previous Windows versions, it's possible with Windows 8
to configure your PC with two or more operating systems, choosing
between them via a boot menu of some kind. And this configuration,
typically called a dual-boot or multi-boot configuration, comes with
just a few gotchas to consider ahead of time.
First,
when possible, you should always install the oldest operating system
first and the newest OS last. That's because most Windows versions
change the boot loader in some ways, and while newer versions understand
the older versions, the reverse is not true. Yes, it is technically
possible in most cases to mix and match, but installing from oldest to
newest is the simplest, and most seamless.
Second,
be sure to prepare your PC for the second OS before trying to install
it. This entails preparing the disk, if necessary, by partitioning it to
accommodate the new OS. You often won't be able to do this from within
Setup, especially if both OSes will sit on the same physical disk (but
in different partitions).
OK,
let's set up dual boot. In this example, I'll assume you have a Windows
7-based PC with a single hard disk, and you would like to add the
Windows 8 Consumer Preview to it.
Add a partition for Windows 8
Since
Windows 7 is up and running already, you will next need to partition
the disk. This is done with the Disk Management utility. The easiest way
to find it is to open the Start menu, type disk part, and the tap Enter. This utility will resemble the following:
You
will see a Disk 0 with a C:\ drive that represents your Windows 7
install as well as a system reserved area. To add Windows 8, you will
need to shrink that C:\ drive, which will create empty space at the end
of the disk. Then you will create a new simple volume (i.e. a partition)
from that space, and later install Windows 8 to that volume.
So
the next step is to right-click the C:\ drive from within Disk
Management and choose Shrink Volume from the pop-up menu. After a bit of
futzing, you'll be shown a window like the one here:
How
you divide the space is up to you, but Microsoft notes you will need 16
GB of free hard disk space for the 32-bit version of the Windows 8
Consumer Preview, or 20 GB for the 64-bit version. Both of these figures
are far too low for a useful, usable Windows 8 install however.
Click
Shrink when you've determined how much space to put aside for Windows
8. When you do, a new area marked "unallocated" is added to the end of
the disk and the C:\ is shrunk accordingly. (Note that this process is
non-destructive, so you will not lose any data.)
Now,
right-click unallocated space and choose New Simple Volume from the
menu. Stepping through the wizard, give it all the available space,
assign it a drive letter, and be sure to give it an obvious name, like
Windows 8, so you can find it easily during Windows 8 Setup.
Set up Windows 8
When
this is complete, you can install Windows 8. You will have to do this
from bootable media, either a Setup DVD or USB flash drive, so you can't
use the web-based installer (though this installer can actually
generate one of those boot devices if needed). The best bet is to create
the Setup media, reboot the PC, and be sure to change the boot device
order if required to boot from the Windows 8 Setup media.
The
manual Windows 8 Setup process hasn't changed a lot since Windows 7,
but there are two key parts of this process where you will need to pay
attention:
Install type.
You will be prompted to choose between Upgrade and Custom install
types. You must choose Custom here, since you are not upgrading Windows 7
and are instead clean installing Windows 8 alongside Windows 7.
Where do you want to install Windows?
In the next Setup step, you will be asked to pick a partition or hard
drive on which to install Windows 8. You cannot install Windows 8 to the
same partition or hard drive to which Windows 7 is installed. Instead,
you must choose a different partition or hard drive. So choose the
partition you created earlier.
Windows 8 will install normally and eventually boot into the new OS.
Choosing between Windows 7 and Windows 8 at boot time
By
default, your PC will boot into the most recently-installed OS, which
in this case is Windows 8. But it will briefly stop at a new boot menu,
which gives you the opportunity to choose the OS at boot time.
Configuring the boot menu
You can configure this boot menu by clicking Change defaults or choose other options.
The following options are available here:
Change the timer. Here, you can change the boot menu timer to a set group of time limits, including 5 minutes, 30 seconds, and 5 seconds.
Choose a default operating system.
By default, your PC will boot into the most recently installed OS if
the menu timer expires. With this option, you can choose a different
Windows version as the default.
Choose other options. This option triggers the Windows 8 recovery environment, which bears further discussion at a later date.
You
can also modify this boot menu a bit from within Windows 8 (but not
from within Windows 7). And this other interface provides a bit more
fine-grained control over the boot options, especially for the boot menu
timer.
To
access these Windows 8-based settings, mouse into the lower-left corner
of the screen and right-click when the Start tip thumbnail appear.
Choose Control Panel from the context menu that appears. And then, in
the Control Panel window, search for system. (The Search box is automatically selected for you.) In the Control Panel search results list, choose View advanced system settings.
This will open the following window:
If
necessary, navigate to the Advanced tab and click Settings under
Startup and Recovery. The resulting window lets you configure the
default OS to boot into and, more important, the boot timer to any value
you prefer.
And really, that's about all there is to it. Go forth and dual boot!
Source: http://winsupersite.com/article/windows8/windows-8-consumer-preview-dual-boot-windows-7-142631
Source: http://winsupersite.com/article/windows8/windows-8-consumer-preview-dual-boot-windows-7-142631
