Can I stop Win10 hijacking my dual boot options?

SonicHawk said:

Howdy... I thought I'd stopped Win10 interfering with my dual boot options (selecting Win10 or Win7) but last night showed that disabling Fast Startup isn't enough.

Wishing to switch over, I used the “install updates and shut down” option, so I could defer the lengthy Win10 start-up til next day. Then I switched on my PC a minute later, to fire up Win7 - and the dual boot option had been hijacked by Win10 so I was forced to let that Win10 update happen that night, after all.

I was denied use of the computer for FIFTY MINUTES.

And as for what I think of the Win10 changes - desktop gadgets gone, screen res wrong, daft messages about how I need to "fix" my Microsoft Account - I'll try and deal with that mess later.

Not sure what you really mean by "hijacking". The install set your default OS to Win 10. That is normal. You told it to install and shutdown. The last thing it remembered was Win 10 is the default OS. When you turned it on, that's where it went. I have to assume you got a boot menu and just let it time out to boot to 10.

You could have clicked on Win 7 and it would have booted there. Simply wiggling the mouse on that boot menu screen will stop the timer, to give you a chance to think. The change option on the bottom also will let you change the timeout value and/or the default OS.

MSCONFIG from an Admin command prompt also let's you set the default OS and timeout value before you shutdown or restart.

Is any of this applicable to what you saw happening?

TC

If the computer sat for 50 minutes while trying to load either Windows 10 or Windows 7, there is something screwed up in either of those OS. If you do not want Windows 10 on the drive, then just remove it.

bro67 said:

If the computer sat for 50 minutes while trying to load either Windows 10 or Windows 7, there is something screwed up in either of those OS. If you do not want Windows 10 on the drive, then just remove it.

Didn't sound like it was stuck loading the OS. He was in an update, processing for 50 minutes.

SonicHawk said:

Yes.

I was denied a view of the boot menu - and, by the way, it's set to give me 30 secs to make my mind up. On PC start-up (a cold start, remember) I saw the normal POST / BIOS stuff but then, instead of the boot options, the PC showed the Win10 four-pane window logo, then went into a red screen Win10 updating mode.

That's the process I'd decided to defer until next morning.. but got lumbered with it anyway.

Not much you could have done to prevent it. The install process had already set the boot path to the update, and locked it, per se. You could have gotten tricky with MSCONFIG while it was prepping the install, but probably would have broken something. Not worth it. Anyhow, that's why you were denied a view of the boot menu.

f14tomcat said:

Didn't sound like it was stuck loading the OS. He was in an update, processing for 50 minutes.

That should not happen, since there is something else with the OS. Windows has to load before the updates start happening, which is really ridiculous in that Microsoft still insists on rebooting for every little update Windows installs. Unless it is an update to the actual OS or System, there should not be a need for it to lock up and keep the user from doing anything.

The only thing that I can think of is with how Windows 10 is doing the same thing that 7 would do with a previous OS installed. That is when you have to decide which OS is more important and is used 99% of the time.

Windows 10 can be ran off of a USB stick now. As a portable OS, it is just as good as installed on a hard drive. It does not touch the OS installed on the hard drive, plus you can take it with you anywhere with your files on the stick.

SonicHawk said:

Yes.

I was denied a view of the boot menu - and, by the way, it's set to give me 30 secs to make my mind up. On PC start-up (a cold start, remember) I saw the normal POST / BIOS stuff but then, instead of the boot options, the PC showed the Win10 four-pane window logo, then went into a red screen Win10 updating mode.

That's the process I'd decided to defer until next morning.. but got lumbered with it anyway.

Red Screen is not an update. That is a major error that involves Hardware. Happens especially on Overclocked systems and those with some really serious driver issues.

If you are getting RSOD's, then you need to change your overclock settings if you are overclocking the CPU or APU/GPU.

bro67 said:

Red Screen is not an update. That is a major error that involves Hardware. Happens especially on Overclocked systems and those with some really serious driver issues.

If you are getting RSOD's, then you need to change your overclock settings if you are overclocking the CPU or APU/GPU.

If the OP has his background slideshow set, and also chose to use an accent color from that background, it could easily be red, or blue, or green.....I've seen it many times. It's just the last accent color active at the time it started the update. Not saying this is the case. Let's let the OP, @SonicHawk, answer that one.