dual booting windows 7 and 10

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  1. Posts : 84
    Windows 10 Home
    Thread Starter
       #101

    Update:
    I've tried repair booting - still won't repair my laptop
    Tried booting into Partition Wizard and deleted all partitions except Windows 7
    Booted back into Macrium Reflect and now it's not even recognizing my external hard drive - so apparently I have nothing to recover!

    With that I got my HP Recovery USB stick out, thankfully it is booting to that. Running a factory reset on that so I get Windows 10 back.

    As soon as that is done I'm going to use Macrium Reflect to copy across my old Windows 10 partition, so I get all of my data back.

    For now, I'm going to stick with Windows 10 - anything that won't run in 10 can be run on my Acer Aspire, with Windows 7. I've got more important things to do now.

    In the future, I may try again with the dual booting setup - or alternatively, if I can spare £60, I'll give it to the computer repair shop in my university and they can sort it out for me.
      My Computers


  2. Posts : 84
    Windows 10 Home
    Thread Starter
       #102

    Okay, an update on the situation:

    Been to my local computer shop (at university) and they have dual booted my laptop today - turned out that deleting windows 10 off the system wasn't a problem - however, an alternative BIOS was required, and installing the drivers for 7 was painful (what I found out - only the DVD drive worked). After the network driver was installed, the wireless driver was installed, then came the USB ports, and from there, everything else could be installed.

    However, I have a small issue:

    If the last booted OS was Windows 7, it brings up the Windows Boot Manager, allowing to choose between either OS. If neither OS is selected within 30 seconds, Windows 7 should load automatically.

    If the last booted OS was Windows 10, the laptop boots back into Windows 10 automatically, the next time it is booted - it doesn't give the OS choice.

    Is this something about Windows 10 not recognizing Windows 7?

    Any suggestions for me to have a go at tonight/tomorrow would be appreciated - otherwise it might have to go back to uni on Thursday...
      My Computers


  3. Posts : 18,424
    Windows 11 Pro
       #103

    spotify95 said:
    Any suggestions for me to have a go at tonight/tomorrow would be appreciated - otherwise it might have to go back to uni on Thursday...
    Turn off Windows 10 fast startup:
    Fast Startup - Turn On or Off in Windows 10 - Windows 10 Forums
      My Computer


  4. Posts : 84
    Windows 10 Home
    Thread Starter
       #104

    NavyLCDR said:
    I think fast startup might be the issue because I just turned it on, after about 2-3 hours of inactivity. Last booted OS was Windows 10. It took me to the OS selection screen (aka Windows 7 Boot Manager). I'll have to look into that today or tomorrow.

    Thanks once again for your help, apologies that I didn't get back to you sooner (I was just trying to find the right time to take the laptop in for dual booting. Drivers were a nightmare, as the computer shop reported - like what I found out, the only thing they started with was the DVD drive - nothing else. But they got them on in the end!)

    edit: Looks like it IS Fast Boot causing the issue. It said on the power plan area that restarting the computer doesn't affect fast boot, so I tested a restart and it came with the boot manager. On shutdown and power on, it went straight to Windows 10. Fast boot is going, because tbh, the time to boot up under "normal boot" (i.e. with fast boot disabled) is about the same as that of Windows 7. Do I really need a 15 second boot up time?

    edit 2: Fast start has been disabled - dual booting works fine now. This can be marked as resolved now. Time to transfer data, programs etc across to the new dual boot system and all will be good!
      My Computers


  5. Posts : 3,506
    Windows 10 Pro 64-bit 21H1 (May 2021 build 19043.1083)
       #105

    Why finding drivers for Windows 7 was a nightmare? Using an appropriate report tool such as Aida64 you can find out exactly which is the hardware, so you know what you are looking for. In worst case you can see the hardware IDs of a device and Google them. Of course you don't rely only on notebook support site for the drivers, you go directly at chipset manufacturer site (Intel, Realtek etc). This shouldn't be too hard for experienced technicians, let alone professionals. And since the notebook had no access to the network or USB, they could either take out the hard disk, connect it to a USB adapter and then transfer any tools and drivers, or burn them on CD-R and transfer to the notebook without taking out the hard disk. At least you got it working now. Great!
      My Computer


 

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