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With a windows 7 & 10 dual boot computer, do I have to load the programs in both drives or can I load them on a different third drive. Have done one computer so far and reloaded all programs on both drive but it would be easier and less wasted space if i could load them on different drive once for both os. Thanks in advance

jr53
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2 Answers2

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Most programs will need to be installed separately on each drive so that they can make changes to different parts of the operating system (e.g. the Registry, file associations).

That said, if the program can run without being installed then you could run it off of a third drive or a usb stick. Take a look at http://portableapps.com/ for some examples.

Curtis
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While Curtis' answer is correct (+1), I want to share another option in regards to "wasting space."

You can save space by installing an application on both OSs to the same location.

For example, lets say you are installing 7-Zip. You can boot to Windows 7 and install the application to its default directory "c:\Program Files\7-zip"

You can then reboot into Windows 10 and install 7-Zip to the same directory you did in Windows 7. I.E. "c:\Program Files\7-zip" If the drive letter is different, obviously you will need to put the appropriate drive letter in.

Windows 10 does not care where the files are. It will make the appropriate entries into the registry and your Windows 10 user's appdata, etc... the files will just be located in the Windows 7 file system.

On a different note, as Curtis said, portable apps work well, or better, in some cases. I use Calibre to manage my ebooks. I installed it on every computer I use. However, Calibre gets updated fairly often. This is a pain, as every time I launched it on one of my PCs, I had to download and reinstall it on every machine. I ended up switching to the portable version. I installed it to my Dropbox folder and created a shortcut to the app on every machine. Now I only have to update it once by installing it to my Dropbox folder. Now when I launch it somewhere and I have to update it, I only have to update it once and every machine uses that up-to-date version.

Keltari
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