Install Windows 8 on top of Windows 7

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thomja

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Feb 2, 2014
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I for one think that Windows 7 is way more superior to windows 8. But there comes times when money becomes a bigger issue for game developers and Microsoft has the gift of it. So I REALLY want to try out a game called Project Spark. I have a beta key for it but the devs made it windows 8 only!

So in my PC I have this:

SSD: Windows 7 + some other stuff
HDD 2TB: Windows 7 + steam games + After Effect files etc etc etc
HDD 1TB (5200 RPM): Basically a place where I store crap that I have downloaded.

Now I want to install Windows 8 on my 2TB HDD. I want to keep the folders that are in there the way they are because some of them are linked to some programs on my SSD like Steam for example. But I don't want the old Windows 7 OS. Is there a way for me to replace just windows 7 with Windows 8 while keeping the folders in the root of the drive?

Thanks
 
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bryonhowley

bryonhowley

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Oct 24, 2011
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Yes it can be done. If you install Windows 8 onto a drive/partition that already has a Windows install then the installer will move the Windows,Program Files,Program Files (x86),ProgramData,and Users folder to a new folder called Windows.old. It will then continue with the install. After the install is done you can remove the Windows.old folder with the Disk Cleanup app.
 
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thomja

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Feb 2, 2014
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So the installer won't touch the folders that does not have anything to do with windows? I thought that it just put everything that was on the drive into the windows.old folder.

But with the risk of going alittle off-topic. I tried this and I recieved the message

"Windows 8 cannot be installed to this disk. The selected disk has an MBR partition table. On EFI systems, Windows can only be installed to GP disks."

I was that I can just make a new partition from that HDD and install Windows 8 on that partition. But I still need to convert the partition to a GP partition. I googled some on found out that I could press F10 to enter the command prompt and enter

DISKPART > select disk 0
DISKPART > clean
DISKPART > convert gpt

Will the clean command clean my entire disk or just the partition?

Thanks
 
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