Is it possible to boot windows 7 32 bit on a windows 10 64 bit PC?

[VENU2603]

I have a old Lenovo 32 bit Windows 7 laptop. Recently bought a Lenovo 64 bit Windows 10 64 bit Yoga 900 laptop. I wish to place the old Windows 7 HDD in a USB enclosure and boot from Windows 10 laptop. Will this work?

 

[USAFRet]

I have a old Lenovo 32 bit Windows 7 laptop. Recently bought a Lenovo 64 bit Windows 10 64 bit Yoga 900 laptop. I wish to place the old Windows 7 HDD in a USB enclosure and boot from Windows 10 laptop. Will this work?

For multiple reasons, probably not.

1. You can't boot from a USB drive, unless you have done a whole bunch of specific things to make it do that.
2. You generally can't boot from an OS from a whole different PC or laptop. Sometimes it works, but don't count on it.

Why are you wanting to do this?

 

[geofelt]

If you want to use the old HDD in an external enclosure for data files, I do not see why not.
You will probably want to reformat the HDD to get rid of windows and the recovery partition.

 

[VENU2603]

I have a old Lenovo 32 bit Windows 7 laptop. Recently bought a Lenovo 64 bit Windows 10 64 bit Yoga 900 laptop. I wish to place the old Windows 7 HDD in a USB enclosure and boot from Windows 10 laptop. Will this work?

For multiple reasons, probably not.

1. You can't boot from a USB drive, unless you have done a whole bunch of specific things to make it do that.
2. You generally can't boot from an OS from a whole different PC or laptop. Sometimes it works, but don't count on it.

Why are you wanting to do this?

 

[VENU2603]

Thanks for quick response. Some old software like Money 98 International Edition does not run on Windows 10 PC. There is no way to migrate the data in this software to newer version of Money or Quicken SW.
What are those bunch of specific things to be done to make it work?

 

[USAFRet]

Thanks for quick response. Some old software like Money 98 International Edition does not run on Windows 10 PC. There is no way to migrate the data in this software to newer version of Money or Quicken SW.
What are those bunch of specific things to be done to make it work?

Install it ON the external.
http://lifehacker.com/how-to-run-a-portable-version-of-windows-from-a-usb-dri-1565509124
http://www.intowindows.com/how-to-install-windows-7-to-usb-external-hard-drive-must-read/

You can't change it after it is already installed on a drive.


I suggest running that WIn 7 32bit in a virtual machine, rather than trying to boot it natively.
VirtualBox is a good solution for this.

 

[molletts]

You could convert it to a virtual machine, which you can then run under Win10.

This page gives instructions for several different virtualisation platforms. If you've got Win10 Pro then you can use Microsoft HyperV, otherwise VMWare Player is probably your best bet.